It's not questionable, just good practice. And my experience tells me it's a Best Practice. `Bartweiss gives a good overview of it, but I'll share some advice I got from an engineering greybeard (which I most definitely am not).
He had a great story to go with this, but the TLDR is that the PoC is the safe choice when applied to engineering: give a true, best-faith effort to prove the opposing view correct. (And best-faith is important: you can not approach it with bias, lest you waste everyone's time.) If you're right, then you'll find an irrefutable flaw in the engineering, and if you're wrong you've learned something new.
If it sounds like a lot of effort, it is.
But this is also utterly win-win. It's a way of assuring that you've been careful. Avoiding the humiliation of hubris is great if a detail of the implementation was missed at first glance. But you also will inevitably more fully understand the problem when you've failed to implement the opposing view; it also puts you in the excellent position to graciously be on the same side as your opponent and now you can sway your now-ally-in-war in their reasoning. In either way, your goal must be to solve the problem, and not merely "win" political points.
Of course, there's crackpot theories and stupid ideas and foolish plans which should be dismissed with prejudice. But hopefully you're working in a professional environment where your coworkers really are trying their best to succeed. And even then, a serious engineer will still give the stupid ideas at least some (small) time of day, as you must have a reason for all decisions, even dismissals; as you become experienced, you'll be able to properly dismiss these faster and more precisely, but you'll still need to go through the process. That process is what separates the people who loudly proclaim they are smart and right from those who would testify in court they are right.
(Incidentally, this is part of the reason why I get immensely frustrated with "idea people", as it takes much more work to flesh out their half-assed ideas into full-assed ideas. Non-engineers don't get that there's a huge amount of effort to constantly take everything and everyone seriously.)
He had a great story to go with this, but the TLDR is that the PoC is the safe choice when applied to engineering: give a true, best-faith effort to prove the opposing view correct. (And best-faith is important: you can not approach it with bias, lest you waste everyone's time.) If you're right, then you'll find an irrefutable flaw in the engineering, and if you're wrong you've learned something new.
If it sounds like a lot of effort, it is.
But this is also utterly win-win. It's a way of assuring that you've been careful. Avoiding the humiliation of hubris is great if a detail of the implementation was missed at first glance. But you also will inevitably more fully understand the problem when you've failed to implement the opposing view; it also puts you in the excellent position to graciously be on the same side as your opponent and now you can sway your now-ally-in-war in their reasoning. In either way, your goal must be to solve the problem, and not merely "win" political points.
Of course, there's crackpot theories and stupid ideas and foolish plans which should be dismissed with prejudice. But hopefully you're working in a professional environment where your coworkers really are trying their best to succeed. And even then, a serious engineer will still give the stupid ideas at least some (small) time of day, as you must have a reason for all decisions, even dismissals; as you become experienced, you'll be able to properly dismiss these faster and more precisely, but you'll still need to go through the process. That process is what separates the people who loudly proclaim they are smart and right from those who would testify in court they are right.
(Incidentally, this is part of the reason why I get immensely frustrated with "idea people", as it takes much more work to flesh out their half-assed ideas into full-assed ideas. Non-engineers don't get that there's a huge amount of effort to constantly take everything and everyone seriously.)