Although the company's executives have admitted that there had been ac

Question

Although  the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record  expenses, they could not yet say precisely how much money was involved.

(A) the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record

(B) the company's executives admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record

(C) the company's executives, admitting accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

(D) admission by the company's executives was made of accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

(E) admission by the company's executives that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

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itspC · Accepted Answer

A) illogical parallelism of failure is not needed 
 B) Perfect + concise. Best option(active voice) 
 C) comma slice without verb.. creating a incomplete sentence
D) B is better than this (passive voice) 
E) B is better than this (passive voice)

Pls. HIT KUDOS

GMATNinja · Answer

First, let's look at a stripped-down version of (B):

"Although the company's executives admitted  , they could not yet say precisely how much money was involved."

This is completely fine. It's just a simple past main verb (" could  not yet say") coupled with a simple past verb in the "although" clause ("admitted"). This is no different in structure than something like this:

"Even though Tim did not admit to any wrongdoing, he still agreed to pay the fine."

Do we know the exact sequencing of the two past actions here ("did not admit" and "agreed")? Not really. All we know is that the two actions occurred sometime in the past, and we don't really care about the order, if any.

The same is true in choice (B). We have two simple past verbs, and we don't really care about the order. But notice that we also get a past perfect verb in choice (B): "there  had been  accounting irregularities..." So a logical interpretation is that "admitted" and "could not say" happened at some point in the past, while "had been" happened BEFORE those two past actions.

Both "reporting" and "failure" function as nouns here. The sentence says that the irregularities included two things:  reporting  of revenue and  failure  to record expenses. You're correct that "reporting" is a gerund, but that's just a specific type of noun; "failure" is also a noun. So these are perfectly parallel.

I hope that helps!

Avysar · Answer

A is incorrect as it says 'admitted that ..as well as of...'. As well as of is incorrect
B is structured perfectly
C sounds incomplete 
D and E say the company's admission...which is awkward construction.
Hence B

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sathik63 · Answer

A) the company's executives  have  admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue,  as well as  of failure to record- Incorrect use of present perfect tense we need past tense to indicate time sequence. -Incorrect

B) the company's executives admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record

C) the company's executives,  admitting  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording- Although must be followed by a clause but there is no verb here- Incorrect

D)  admission by the company's executives  was made of accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording--passive and conveys wrong meaning.- Incorrect

E)  admission by the company's executives  that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording- passive and meaning is not clear- Incorrect

bacseialex · Answer

The sentence is not parallel.  improper reporting of revenue  and  as well as of ?? improper - adjective and of- prepositional phrase. Wrong
(A)- out

I don't find anything wrong with this one. It sounds terrible, but that does not play a factor to eliminate. I will keep it for the moment.

If we cut this part admitting accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording expenses , the sentence does not have a verb.

(C) - out.

Admission was made of accounting.... ? That does not make sense.

(D) - out

The same problem as in (C). That introduces a new clause here. Cut  that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording expenses  and you don't have a main verb.

Hence (E) is out.

IMO - (B) is the right answer.

Please correct me if i made a mistake.

TrevorKleeTutor · Answer

Although  the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record  expenses, they could not yet say precisely how much money was involved.

A) the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record

B) the company's executives admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record

C) the company's executives, admitting accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

D) admission by the company's executives was made of accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

E) admission by the company's executives that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

These long ones are always frustrating to do, but we can approach them the same way as we've been approaching the others.

First: meaning. I'm going to elide some of the long phrases.
The company's executives have admitted that there had been   and  .

Grammar: this is a mess. There's no parallelism between our two parts connected by a conjunction. They use "as well as  of ", but what is this of supposed to refer to?

Splits:
A gets the parallelism wrong.
C gets the meaning wrong by omitting there had been, and relegating the rest to unnecessary modifier.
D makes the meaning less clear by making it passive.
E changes the meaning again, but it's really unclear what it's trying to say. What does although mean here?

So it has to be B.

unraveled · Answer

Although  the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record  expenses, they could not yet say precisely how much money was involved.

A) the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record

B) the company's executives admitted that there  had been accounting  irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record - CORRECT.

C) the company's executives, admitting accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording - WRONG. Main verb is absent.

D) admission by the company's executives was made of accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording - WRONG. Meaning-wise messed-up. 'Admission was made of accounting irregularities' is vague and hold no value.

E) admission by the company's executives that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure  in recording  - WRONG. Idiomatically wrong.

IMO Answer B.

hoanganhdang · Answer

A. 'of failure to record' here means 'involving improper reporting of failure to record'. This doesn't make any sense.

B. parallelism between accounting irregularities and failure to record. Keep B

C. There is no verb after 'the company's executives' => fragment. Eliminate C

D. Although admission was made of accounting irregularities, this is not as neat and precise as B. Eliminate D

E. If you remove the fluff the sentence is: although admission that there had been, there is also no verb following admission. We need a full clause after 'although'. Eliminate E

We are left with B

gmatassassin88 · Answer

HI  VeritasKarishma 
 ChiranjeevSingh 
 GMATNinja 
 GMATCoachBen

I hAVE DOUBT W.R.T 'TENSE'.As per my understanding present perfect tense ' have' is correctly used in option A, whereas in option B since proper timeline is not mentioned as to when CEO admitted accounting irreegularities, usage of simple past tense is incorrect.

Kindly help in understanding how option B is correct. It seems to be a deterministic error

SanjaySrini · Answer

Hi,

In B, how is "reporting of revenue and failure to record expenses " parallel , failure has a verb in it while reporting is gerund.

Mandeep1357 · Answer

Although  the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record  expenses, they could not yet say precisely how much money was involved.

A) the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record

B) the company's executives admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record

C) the company's executives, admitting accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

D) admission by the company's executives was made of accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

E) admission by the company's executives that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

If we compare first and last few words of answer choices vertically,

In A, B and C, Subject is "the company's executives"
In D and E , Subject is "admission"

The structure of the sentence is " Although Subject + verb......, Subject + verb..........

Subject of second clause is "they". "They" will refer to the subject of first clause. 
"they" cannot refer to "admission". Eliminate D and E.

In C, we have a comma after the subject "the company's executives, ...", it is "Subject, modifier, verb" construction. 
We must have verb after second comma. Verb is missing in C....Eliminate

In A, "involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record" , "of failure to record" after "as well as" is not parallel to "reporting of revenue"..Eliminate.

Also in A, "had" is used, so the other action must be in simple past. "have admitted" is wrong.

Hence, B is the correct answer

mba757 · Answer

GMATNinja  is it a hard rule that we need to keep complex gerunds parallel to action nouns? In the MGMAT SC book, it states that only complex gerunds can be parallel to action nouns. B makes logical sense, and it makes sense it's the answer. But now looking at your response, coupled with the explanation on parallelism within the SC book, there's some doubt now.

EMPOWERgmatVerbal · Answer

Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, and narrow down our options quickly so we know how to answer questions like this when they pop up on the GMAT! To begin, let's take a quick look at the question and highlight any major differences between the options in  orange :

Although  the company's executives have admitted that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record  expenses, they could not yet say precisely how much money was involved.

(A)  the company's executives have admitted that there had been  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue , as well as of failure to record

(B)  the company's executives admitted that there had been  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue  and failure to record

(C)  the company's executives, admitting  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue  and failure in recording

(D)  admission by the company's executives was made of  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue  and failure in recording

(E)  admission by the company's executives that there had been  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue  and failure in recording

After a quick glance over the options, there are a few key differences we can focus on:

1. Starting with “the company’s executives” vs. “admission by the company’s executives” (Active vs. Passive Voice)
2. have admitted / admitted / admitting (Verb Tense)
3. as well as of failure to record / and failure to record / and failure in recording (Idioms & Logic)

Let’s start with #1 on our list because it will be a simple either/or split.  We can eliminate 2-3 options rather quickly! On the GMAT, active voice is always preferred over passive voice. Let’s eliminate any options that use passive voice:

(A)  the company's executives have admitted  that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue, as well as of failure to record

(B)  the company's executives admitted  that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record

(C)  the company's executives, admitting  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

(D)  admission by the company's executives was made of  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

(E)  admission by the company's executives that there had been  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

We can eliminate option D & E because they use passive voice, which is a big no-no on the GMAT.  Now that we have it narrowed down, let’s tackle #2 on our list: verb tense forms. We need to make sure the verbs convey a logical meaning. Let’s see how each option handles this:

(A) the company's executives  have admitted  that there  had been  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue,  as well as of  failure to record 
This is  INCORRECT  because using 2 past perfect verbs in the same sentence doesn’t make sense. Past perfect needs to indicate there is a past event that happened BEFORE another past event. In this case, the sentence is wrongly conveying that these two events (accounting irregularities and their admitting it) happened at the same time. Also, the phrase “as well as of” is awkward and not idiomatically correct.

(B) the company's executives  admitted  that there  had been  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue  and  failure to record 
This is our  CORRECT  choice! By using past tense for “admitted” and past perfect for “had been,” this sentence clearly shows the order of events logically. Also, using just plain old “and” to connect the two items at the end works much better!

(C) the company's executives , admitting  accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording

This is  INCORRECT  because it removes the verb “admitted” entirely by turning it into an -ing modifier! Any time you have a subordinate clause that begins with the word “although,” it needs to have an independent clause attached to it that contains a subject and verb. “Although the company’s executives” is not an independent clause, so it doesn’t work here.

There you have it - option B is our winner!  By starting out with the either/or split, we were able to narrow down our choices quickly, leaving us more time to tackle more complex grammar issues.

Don’t study for the GMAT. Train for it.

MooneeyTunes · Answer

Can someone please explain the parallelism between accounting irregularities and failure to record?

EMPOWERgmatVerbal

mSKR · Answer

(B) the company's executives admitted that there had been  accounting  irregularities  involving improper reporting of revenue  and failure to record

There had been A and B
A - irregularities ( Noun)
B - Failure ( Noun)

PRNDL · Answer

Most of the posts for this question say that D and E should be eliminated because of the passive voice. But isn't there a more concrete reason to eliminate them ?

mSKR · Answer

(B) the company's executives admitted  that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure to record   -  clear ;admitted what?

(D) admission  by the company's executives  was made of accounting irregularities  involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording - admission was made of irregaularities and failure?- Does this make any sense ?

(E) admission  by the company's executives that there had been accounting irregularities involving improper reporting of revenue and failure in recording  -  no clause

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

A and B are close in some ways, but the OF is something to look at

Paras31 · Answer

Hello , i have a dout regarding modifier .. as ed and ing modifier need to have the doer after ',' , do we need to have doer after sub-ordinate clause 
Eg : Although admission by the company's executives was made of........, they could not ...

Is they grammatically correct ?

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Although the company's executives have admitted that there had been ac

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