Having too many return statements in a method increases the method's essential complexity because the flow of execution is broken each time a return statement is encountered. This makes it harder to read and understand the logic of the method.

== Noncompliant Code Example

With the default threshold of 3:

----
public boolean myMethod() { // Noncompliant; there are 4 return statements
  if (condition1) {
    return true;
  } else {
    if (condition2) {
      return false;
    } else {
      return true;
    }
  }
  return false;
}
----
