D'oh! Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but foresight could be, too. Here's how you can catch more business blunders before they happen.

Peter Justen is a serial entrepreneur whose most recent venture is MyBizHomepage, a Middleburg, Virginia, company that offers a free, web-based financial dashboard system and projects more than $3 million in sales this year. However, even a seasoned entrepreneur like Justen can slip up. He could have explored international opportunities before launching his company last September, but he decided to focus on the $25 million U.S. financial dashboard market instead. Fast-forward to today, when about 35 percent of MyBizHomepage's subscribers are international, logging on to check their financials from emerging entrepreneurial economies such as Estonia, Pakistan, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe.

Justen, 51, admits he didn't anticipate the site's immediate and far-flung global reach. "The big 'duh' moment was the international side," he says. "I didn't see any of that coming." Luckily, the website translates into foreign currencies--"A payable is a payable," says Justen--but the company is planning to produce international-language editions of its product to meet the needs of its growing international roster.

Every leader can spot missteps in hindsight, and the corporate highway is littered with projects and prognostications that, well, seemed like good ideas at the time. Failing to anticipate the downsides of a decision, however, can blindside leaders and jeopardize the bottom line. When General Motors Corp. started a co-promotion with NBC's The Apprentice that allowed the public to post ads for the Chevy Tahoe at chevyapprentice.com, it received unflattering spoof ads about the SUV's damaging contributions to global warming. Starbucks had its baristas e-mail a free-drink coupon to friends and family last year--but the coupon inevitably zoomed around the internet, and an angry customer filed a $114 million lawsuit after Starbucks stopped accepting it. And even the ubiquitous Google has "D'oh!" moments: After buying YouTube, the company finds itself defending the acquisition as it fights YouTube's expensive copyright battles.