Conducting a pre-mortem, as you describe it, is almost precisely what STPA (Nancy Leveson) is about. You think of the system's behavior and present design and the things that can go wrong. Then you try to determine what would lead to bad or erroneous outcomes, and build in controls based on that analysis. Sometimes it's things that should be blindingly obvious, but we've demonstrated over the past 60+ years of higher technology use and development that we aren't good at spotting those things. Even simple things like, "The lawn mower should have a dead-man switch" is often forgotten.