It sounds like someone under pressure came up with a "loophole" that was compliant with a motivated but literal reading of the CMES reporting requirement. In this case, I would wager dollars to donuts that the CMES reporting requirement only anticipated door separated/not separated.
Mental gymnastics is used to argue compliance with some technical requirement, like it is some legal proceeding where you can debate what the definition of "is" is.
No amount of formal quality process can defend against business pressure and incentives to hack the same system. Requirements dont and cant cover every corner case, like someone saying a door was never fully separated because you tied them together with a shoelace before dethatching it.
Asking if a justification passes the "red face test" is ultimately more valuable than asking if it passes a literal reading.