It sounds to me that you are very frustrated by your inability to explain what you mean by, "my exposure goal is to fully utilize the sensor in my camera."

I was going to prepare another exhibit for you but the sun is not up yet so here is some information from The Exposure Latitude of a Digital Camera and Comparison to Film. It's an interesting article among many offered by people who really understand the subject.

Roger Clark begins the article with the definition, "Exposure Latitude: The amount of overexposure or underexposure used in acquiring an image (e.g. with a given type of film or a digital camera) that can still produce acceptable results."

The article supports my previous comments and includes a demonstration using a Canon 1D Mark II and a Mackbeth ColorChecker exposed in full sun over a range from the recommended meter reading +6 stops (blown highlights) to -11 stops (noisy). Each raw capture was developed from raw to equalize the effect of the exposure differences. Anyone with a little time and curiosity can replicate these tests using their own camera.

What is relevant to this discussion is that the one exposed at +1 stop:



and the one exposed at -1 stop:



are virtually indistinguishable.

In other words, for a scene with a narrow DR and a camera with a wide DR, exposure is not critical. You may not need to go to extremes with ETTR or your goal to "fully utilize the sensor" when you are using raw capture. Getting the exposure "right" is a pointless exercise. Close enough is not just for horseshoes and hand grenades.

Of course, shooting in low light at high ISO is a different matter. That's when you need to be more careful because high ISO narrows the camera's DR.

And JPEG exposure is more important for reasons I have already covered.