Word of the Day: Carte blanche
Very rarely do we give someone carte blanche.
When an architect plans a building, they need to design it according to the wishes of their customer. Engineers designing new software systems have to meet the specification of their customers.
Carte blanche, which is French, literally means white paper. It means to give someone permission to do whatever they want to do.
A similar term is to give someone a clean/blank slate.
If you were having your house painted, would you provide the painters carte blanche to choose the colours? Probably not, right?
Most of the time when something is needed, the designer, engineer etc. are not given carte blanche.
Imagine what would happen if they were. We might be pleasantly surprised or highly disappointed.