You need to tie it to a business need. I have a single project which is being reviewed for both performance. If you don't need a new feature, why change the cod

You need to tie it to a business need. I have a single project which is being reviewed for both performance. If you don't need a new feature, why change the code? If you do need a new feature: offer a trade-off. You can do it quickly, buy it will be slow, or you can take additional time to improve the performance. Which choice you makes depends on your performance benchmarks/buckets.