I wish more people would follow this philosophy. There's nothing more annoying than people that follow the letter of the law without thinking about why it was established in the first place. Most (good) companies will easily forgive breaking the rules if you're doing it for the right reasons with good results.
The point of "the rules" is to protect the company in case someone does something really stupid on their own ("oy! it was against our rules!"), but I don't think competent executives are /that/ tied to them if people break them for a good reason.
I've always found the "letter of the law" types to be the most dangerous sort around, and that's not at all limited to programming. They're the ones who make authoritarianism work, the ones who tattle at the first sign of "not following the rules", the ones with absolutely no imagination, no curiosity, and an unwillingness to think for themselves.
If there are too many of these around or too many in your management chain you should get the hell out. But maybe that's just me.
The point of "the rules" is to protect the company in case someone does something really stupid on their own ("oy! it was against our rules!"), but I don't think competent executives are /that/ tied to them if people break them for a good reason.