  Suppressing unwanted transitions out of the instantaneous ground state is a
major challenge in unitary adiabatic quantum computation. A recent approach
consists in building counterdiabatic potentials approximated using variational
strategies. In this contribution, we extend this variational approach to
Lindbladian dynamics, having as a goal the suppression of diabatic transitions
between pairs of Jordan blocks in quantum annealing. We show that,
surprisingly, unitary counterdiabatic ans\"atze are successful for dissipative
dynamics as well, allowing for easier experimental implementations compared to
Lindbladian ans\"atze involving dissipation. Our approach not only guarantees
improvements of open-system adiabaticity but also enhances the success
probability of quantum annealing.
