You confuse guideline with policies. Guidelines have a fair bit if leeway, policies have very little wriggle room. If a policy has wriggle room, it's not been drafted very well :-)
I say that because in my observation of companies' PR disasters after Wikipedia editing, the real-world idea of what constitutes COI is quite a bit broader than Wikipedia jargon "COI". Rules-lawyering doesn't convince the papers.
I've done a bit of work liaising with the nicer variety of PR person who really doesn't want to get it wrong - the above is my general advice in these cases.