Counterplanning is a "deadly enemy" that can bring to light the basic assumptions of any proposed plan and helps prevent basic errors in them. It is an effective form of dialectic.

Any plan that appears to be best is subject to many different kinds of error, eg.:
- inadequate setting of goals
- insufficient consideration of all of the goals (hidden goals)
- unclear objectives
- inadequate judging of alternatives
- insufficient understanding of the environment (many aspects are simply unknown)

A good counterplan:
- must appear highly reasonable and attractive
- must give a different interpretations of the data used for the plan based on its plausible view of the what the whole system is like