What I focus on is the _definition_ of Factor of Safety. Traditionally, the factor of safety is defined as the stabilising forces divided by the disturbing forces. The strengths for the soils in a problem are not factored down.
In any strength reduction method, strengths have to be reduced to fail the model. The factor of safety in this kind of method is defined by the strength before reduction divided by the reduced strength when the model fails. Now, once you artificially reduce the strengths of any material in a model, the model is no longer what you initially built.
True, you may have some FoS numbers which are quite close to the traditional method. But you really have to ask yourself whether you are getting the close answer for the right reason. In other words, you just get a number, which happens to be close. That's all.