This is one of the
OG questions that causes the most trouble, partly because a lot of GMAT test-takers have an (occasionally incorrect) impulse to automatically eliminate any answer choice with the word "being."
But we'll get to that. Let's take these buggers in order:
Quote:
A. Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.
That second "it" is the big problem here: "makes it likely to miss signs of incipient trouble..." I suppose that "it" could refer to "heavy commitment" or "course of action", but neither of those would make any sense. (A) is gone.
Quote:
B. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that worked well in the past, makes missing signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting ones likely when they do appear.
This is fairly subtle, but the subject doesn't make a whole lot of sense with the main verb here. "An executive... makes missing signs of incipient trouble... likely when they do appear." The pronoun "they" is OK, but it doesn't make logical sense to say that "an executive makes missing signs of trouble likely..." Also, I see no good reason use "ones" here -- in theory, "ones" would refer to very specific signs of trouble, and there's no good reason to use "ones" when a simple "them" would work. (B) is gone.
Quote:
C. An executive who is heavily committed to a course of action is likely to miss or misinterpret signs of incipient trouble when they do appear, especially if it has worked well in the past.
The "it" is a problem here: "it" generally refers to the nearest singular noun. In this case, "it" would seem to refer to "trouble," and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. "Course of action" would work, but that's much farther back in the sentence.
To be fair, ambiguous pronouns aren't always wrong on the GMAT, so if you want to be conservative, you could keep (C) for now. But as we'll see in a moment, (E) is a much better option.
Quote:
D. Executives’ being heavily committed to a course of action, especially if it has worked well in the past, makes them likely to miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpreting them when they do appear.
"Them" is trying to refer back to a possessive pronoun, "executives'", and that's wrong on the GMAT. Non-possessive pronouns (they, them, he, she, it) can't refer back to possessive nouns on the GMAT. So (D) is gone.
Quote:
E. Being heavily committed to a course of action, especially one that has worked well in the past, is likely to make an executive miss signs of incipient trouble or misinterpret them when they do appear.
There are lots of pronoun issues in the other answer choices, but we're all good with (E): the ambiguous "it" we saw in (C) isn't here at all, and "them" and "they" very clearly refer to "signs of incipient trouble." The subject "being heavily committed to a course of action" works nicely with the main verb phrase ("is likely to make an executive miss signs of trouble..."), so (E) is an upgrade from (B).
That leaves "being" as the only reasonable objection to (E). But "being" is absolutely fine here: it's just a noun, also known as a gerund in this case. "Being" is no different than any other gerund. So (E) is our answer.
Please see last Monday's Topic of the Week for more on gerunds and other "-ing" words on the GMAT:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 39780.html.
I came across one of your post where you have mentioned the usage of a special pronoun 'it' with respect to its 'standalone' usage.
... tml#p49622
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