Counterfactual Self-Questioning for Stable Policy Optimization in Language Models

Recent work on language model self-improvement shows that models can refine their own reasoning through reflection, verification, debate, or self-generated rewards. However, most existing approaches rely on external critics, learned reward models, or ensemble sampling, which increases complexity and training instability. We propose Counterfactual Self-Questioning, a framework in which a single language model generates and evaluates counterfactual critiques of its own reasoning. The method produces an initial reasoning trace, formulates targeted questions that challenge potential failure points, and generates alternative reasoning trajectories that expose incorrect assumptions or invalid steps. These counterfactual trajectories provide structured relative feedback that can be directly used for policy optimization without auxiliary models. Experiments on multiple mathematical reasoning benchmarks show that counterfactual self-questioning improves accuracy and training stability, particularly for smaller models, enabling scalable self-improvement using internally generated supervision alone.