When goal displacements like this happen, it's often instructive to look at them from the perspective of incentives, and look for reasons why the designer favored reuse over use. Sometimes it'll be for reasons deep within the designers head that you can't hope to get at, sometimes it'll be for reasons that you can get through careful (and tactful) questioning, but sometimes the reasons are non-obviously external.

The times I've seen designers (and teams) go wonky over reuse, it's usually been because upper management's fad-of-the-week became reuse, and management either offered incentives (e.g., "part of your bonus will be based on reuse") or they pounded the table demanding reuse "or heads will roll". Either way, common sense started a slow sideways move toward the door.