How to Prevent Schema Mismatches Between Controller and Custom Resource Definitions?

I've been working on a CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) with a controller built using Kubebuilder. Recently, we added an optional field called `newField` to the CRD schema without bumping the API version—it's still `apiVersion: mycrd.example.com/v1beta1`. In a testing environment, we faced issues since the old CRD schema was retained, while the controller was trying to access the new field. This led to data being lost; for example, when the controller set `obj.Status.NewField = "foo"`, it didn't persist because the API server pruned unknown fields on retrieval, leaving `NewField` as an empty string instead of `"foo"`. I'm looking for reliable strategies to minimize such schema mismatches in the future, and I have a couple of ideas. One is to have the controller check if the CRD schema matches its expectations at the start of `Reconcile()`, so it can throw a meaningful error if there's a discrepancy. The second idea involves the controller updating or installing the CRD itself, similar to what Cilium and some other projects do to keep the schema up to date. Any suggestions or best practices would be appreciated!