Leading product in enterprise is different. Post-mortems become political. Everyone knows who's in the room. Everyone calculates what's safe to say. The real reasons things failed stay hidden behind acceptable narratives. "We underestimated complexity" instead of "we shipped what the loudest stakeholder wanted, not what customers needed."

Pre-mortems flip this. "Assume this initiative failed spectacularly six months from now—why?" The failure hasn't happened yet, so there's no blame to assign. No careers to protect. People will tell you what's wrong with the plan if you ask before it matters.

The question "what could go wrong?" gets diplomatic answers. The question "why did this fail?" gets real ones—even when the failure is hypothetical.