"nobody in their right mind would think of compromising ground.."

Oh really! Then you haven't seen some of the things I've seen. The compromises ranged from the trivial to the blatently ludicrous. Here's a crazy one I remember a good fight over. Of course I won.

A large international manufacturer of electrical equipment supplied a telephone switch as part of an experimental telephone network for testing network equipment, debugging software, and training BOC personnel on using that software. (It was one of three large switches and about half a dozen to a dozen more labs connected to this "in house" experimental network.) The installers INSISTED, that I install a plastic bushing in line with the conduit run to the rectifiers "to prevent ground loops." I told them that while telephone company Central Offices (COs) may be exempt from the National Electric Code, this laboratory building wasn't and I flatly refused to comply. They were of course quite angry and upset. They told me that every switch they had installed in the network in the real world was installed this way. As it happened, one of the departments in my company wrote the specifications and set the standards for installation of equipment for Central Offices for the RBOCS. So I asked a contact who worked for them whether or not they take exception to NEC on grounding. He said absolutely not, the internal requrement for telephone company central offices is to comply with NEC in its entirety. So I told him they'd better revisit this manufacturer's switches all over the US because if these people were telling me the truth, every one of them is installed wrong.