Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

Following this advice may screw you over, but hopefully not...

Many of the same inspectors are not there, they are retiring left and right.

Compliance philosophy depends upon the subject working with the FAA to find the reason something happened and addressing that, rather than throwing up a wall of not talking to the FAA, which will likely make you ineligible for it. One of the criteria is that you are willing and able to talk to the FAA about it and correct it. Compliance philosophy allows for a compliance action to take the place of an enforcement action, which means no letters of investigation on record, no actions on your FAA record, and so on. The idea is extending an ASAP-like mentality/program to those outside of or not covered by ASAP.

The lawyers are probably not happy about this, because it cuts them out of most interactions, except for those that are not eligible, such as egregious non-inadvertent (premeditated) violations, usually the ones where there are several issues and people's lives were endangered in the process, pretty far removed from a simple pilot deviation.

But if you feel the better way to handle it is to have a violation on your record, by all means, don't try to go down the compliance philosophy path. Let me say this again, the FAA has a mechanism that directs them to not go down the enforcement route unless your violation was exceptionally egregious and non-inadvertent. This is pretty rare/exceptional in any kind of law/regulation enforcement in my experience.