Mmmm yes.

You are the ones with not only the bird's eye view and the necessary information to develop concrete solutions, but also the responsiblity to comunicate the decision making process to stakeholders. That means telling EOs the truth about why certain controversial decisions are made. An earlier commenter posted something about the HK class sizes study - not all EOs may have the "sharp policy thinking" that defines the typical AO (hope the sarcasm wasn't lost there), but to cherry pick evidence is still insulting their intelligence.

Anyway it's not like we can become AOs if we didn't get a certain type of scholarship that was awarded based on a judgement of abilities at age 18. So there's also that.