It depends what your skill set is - professional engineers are qualified to make the flowcharts and sign off on designs. So it’s not about how you see yourself, it’s whether you have the experience and training to be able to follow actual engineering methodology.

These get trained to be able to reason about why the flowchart is the way it is or outright to construct it. If you can't create a flowchart yourself, you shouldn't direct work following it. Following the flowchart is, so that you don't make mistakes on execution, because there will eventually be mistakes, it's not intended that it saves you from knowing what you do in the first place. In other words: you follow a flowchart to prevent accidental deviations from the process. Once you question, what you actually should do, the flowchart is useless as guidance.

And in other blue collar union environments, following the book is known as "work to rule" and considered a mild form of sabotage/industrial action.

It depends, flowcharts are great for defined processes, but troubleshooting (which vulnerability research mirrors) is not a flowchart or checklist or task list.

I am all in favor for extensive logging, documentation and following the processes, especially regarding safety. But there will always be miscommunication and cases where some thinking or adaptation of those processes are required. Stopping that for cost reduction will eventually lead to enshittification.