I think it's a risk he's consciously taking.

Sure! The safest thing to do if he really absolutely wanted to take no risk of discovery would be to keep more distance. (Maybe go on sabbatical, though I guess that takes too long to come around. ^^)

If you're not saying he's deliberately trying to be found out as the Envoy (which I would say flies strongly against canon), then IDK where we're disagreeing. *g* Yes, other choices he makes besides that interrogation scene could go wrong for him - and in a manner of speaking, they do go 'wrong' vis-a-vis the goal of 'must not be found out as the Envoy'. (They go right for him in the grand scheme of things because they get him closer to Zhao Yunlan, and being found out as the Envoy isn't actually the disaster he seemed to fear.)

My main point, piggybacking off what extrapenguin's observation: I always found it surprising that he goes arrogant towards Chu Shuzhi and Zhu Hong and not 'meek professor' (which is definitely something he has in his toolkit, and is currently still the persona he's pushing towards Zhao Yunlan). I sometimes chew on what his reason might be, and have some thoughts, but no baseline personal 'true reading'. And it could have gotten the SID on his ass much harder; maybe he knew that, maybe he didn't, maybe he knew he was taking that risk but whatever his thinking behind why he took this approach in the interrogation was more important than that risk.