At the beginning, you can understand impedance boundary as a equivalent resistor. It matches the impedance at the airbox boundary so that the wave sees nothing. However, this is ok in a way, but not rigorous.
The trouble is waves propagate along all directions, impedance boundary (IB) only perfectly absorb waves coming vertically. However, in most cases, this is not guaranteed at all, especially at gaze incident angle, impedance boundary almost absorb nothing. Either high-order ABC or PML or Boundary integral have to be applied in such a case.
So if you can predict that your field inside your problem domain is mainly TEM waves hitting the IB, then your result should not be bothered much. However, if your problem has all kinds of waves going out. Then the reflection might destroy your result.