it has the meaning you assigned to it before rolling it, whether or not you're pulling that meaning from a specific table, and whether or not you reveal the system to the players
if you decide ahead of time that a low result is going to be a tough encounter, and a high result is going to be a pile of treasure, then it comes up low and you decide to ignore that and give them treasure instead based on your gut feeling, you're fudging the roll
if you decide what's going to happen next based on your pull from a tarot deck, and somehow get "death" four times in a row, anything less than a disaster scenario is fudging the roll
it's the exact same instinct that leads to "hmm, maybe this piss shit little goblin shouldn't decapitate the barbarian in one hit because it happened to roll well"