"avoid criticism" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You could use it when you are giving advice or warning someone. For example, "To be successful, you have to avoid criticism from your peers."
This is a classic debate strategy -- criticize your opponent and never affirm what you believe in order to avoid criticism.
You cannot avoid criticism.
If you want to avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing".
Speculating about how to avoid criticism usually leads to over-defensiveness.
Not deferential, exactly, but careful to avoid criticism for fear it would be counterproductive.
Mr. Bloomberg may forgo the incentive package, a company executive said, to avoid criticism.
Early, he seemed unrestrained by national Republican efforts to avoid criticism of the Clintons.
But he has apparently put on enough of a show of interest to avoid criticism.
If you want to avoid criticism then you shouldn't be a historian, because historians are trying to understand and explain.
If the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped to avoid criticism by this move, it failed.
It was to avoid criticism and with it the risk that people might notice that no rent was being paid.
