It means that instead of making the painful admission that the contractor signed up to do something that they could not, and that the customer failed to control the deviation of reality from the promise,
Or that the customer asked the impossible by demanding a 3 service aircraft that could hover and land on a super aircraft carrier. Pretty sure the JSF was not a Lockheed Idea, it was a "customer" (read the US DoD, Us government) dream. boeing and lockheed could easily accuse the customer of not so much failing "to control deviations of reality from the promise," but of failing to control the extremely difficult requirements in the first place. and not making the painful admission that they asked too much of one aircraft. Either way suits your argument, its just a matter of perspective