Comment by _tk_
I’m a little surprised by the takes in the comments. Obviously, heads of departments or agencies, CEOs, or similar personnel are generally not in the same league as normal employees when it comes to compliance.
Productivity and efficiency are key for their work. I am sure there are lots of Sysadmins here, that had to disable security controls for a manager or had to configure something in a way to circumvent security controls from actually working. I have been in many situations where I have been asked by IT colleagues if doing something like that was fine, because an executive had to read a PowerPoint file NOW.
Sysadmins are afforded special leniency because of their demonstrated competence. Their leeway is earned. In this case, the "cyber security chief" has no proven skill other than absolute loyalty to his boss, which justified his skipping the usual vetting procedure.