=== What is the potential impact?

The presence of gratuitous conditions can indicate a logical error.
For example, the programmer _intended_ to have the program branch into different
paths but made a mistake when formulating the branching condition.
In this case, this issue might result in a bug and thus affect the reliability
of the application.
For instance, it might lead to the computation of incorrect results.

Additionally, gratuitous conditions and control flow constructs introduce
unnecessary complexity.
The source code becomes harder to understand, and thus, the application becomes
more difficult to maintain.