I am not saying that every CEO decision is a sound or good decision, but the failure in your example would be at whatever management level is between the CEO and the engineers because they provided could have provided sound advice.
However, if the strategic need of the organization required that level of direct engineering support more than the specific engineering productivity…it could be a sound decision.
As an example, I worked at a organization in the late 90s managing field engineers. For an entire week the CEO required our team to be in office instead of in the field. We thought it idiotic at the time, but apparently it help create the optics that convinced the owner of a small company to sell his company which allowed our company acquire a game changing product.
None of us understood the big picture because we couldn’t see the forest through the trees.