Senior staff in pretty much all organisations are given some latitude with respect to performing tasks that they believe will be beneficial without needing to p

Senior staff in pretty much all organisations are given some latitude with respect to performing tasks that they believe will be beneficial without needing to produce a specified cost-benefit. We have one-on-one catch-ups with staff, we have all-hands meetings, we visit clients, read books and articles, attend industry functions, issue press releases, meet with potential investors, etc. There's value in all those things, but very rarely do we need to account for the fact that we spend time on them. Senior engineering staff need that same freedom - it should be totally appropriate for them to make that call that "I'm accountable for the technical quality of this code, and I've decided that this needs to be done". That requires some sense of business acumen - there needs to be an appropriate balance of technical investment to business investment - but that's part of the role of being a senior dev / tech lead / architect / whatever-your-organisation-calls-them.