Depending on what rules apply to your particular transmitter and if you're not just doing FCC but also testing for other countries' standards, sometimes you can

Depending on what rules apply to your particular transmitter and if you're not just doing FCC but also testing for other countries' standards, sometimes you cannot run the production software in order to actually test the radio as required. Granted, you're right, it's the honor system that what ships to customers works like the test subject did, but it's not always entirely due to malice.