Instead of JUST silently failing, why not ALSO log the anomaly as a warning? Surely the Java you're using supports different log levels (ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG).

@PieterB Even though we sometimes go way over budget, we almost always still meet the deadline. The issue is that the original budget was never enough time to begin with, and other projects' deadlines have been agreed upon based on this optimistic budget. In order to make sure the team does not miss any deadlines, I put in more hours.

@Telastyn: From what I have seen, for another developer, there is little accountability. For a manager doing development work, there is even less accountability.