Engineering usually walks into these conversations arguing the merits of the system: why the architecture is sound, why the fix is correct, why the shortcut being proposed is a bad idea technically. Leadership is not weighing the system on its technical merits. They're weighing cash runway, a deadline they already committed to a customer, and a board or a boss they have to answer to. When engineering argues the system and leadership is thinking about the calendar and the checkbook, both sides leave the room certain the other one wasn't listening.
The fix isn't a better technical argument. It's steelmanning leadership's actual constraints, better than leadership states them. Before you argue your position, say theirs back, stronger than they did: 'You've got a customer contract that penalizes us for missing this date, and if we slip again after last quarter, that's a hard conversation with the board.' Now you're not the person fighting the deadline. You're the person who understands exactly what's at stake in keeping it.
Once leadership hears their real constraint stated accurately by the engineering side, the conversation changes shape. You're not opposing the deadline anymore, you're proposing which corners can bend without breaking the thing they're actually protecting.
Leadership doesn't ignore engineering because the technical argument is weak. They tune it out because it usually skips the constraint leadership is actually managing. Argue that constraint better than they do, and you get the room.
Steelmanning means stating leadership's real constraints, cash, deadlines, customers, politics, better than they would themselves, which is what earns engineering a genuine hearing.