> The very few times I've got in trouble with this there's been some hidden objective or constraint I wasn't made aware of, and the discussion I have afterwards is that is not compatible with my way of working.

I’ve had this, but working in hardware development, this things are big problems.

I have to admit though, and in those situations the main problem was conveying to the manager (who tends to be an experienced engineer) that they’ve messed up and the specifications they’ve agreed to are physically impossible to construct.