Well, let's start from the beginning: there are two voices for verbs in the English language (fyi, in Romanian you have three voices!), active and passive. Most of the time we use the active voice, such as in:

Dan is eating an ice cream. - the verb is "to eat" in the Present Continuous form.

She baked a cake for her friends. - the verb is "to bake" in the Past tense.

She will score a 51 on the verbal section. - the verb is "to score" in the Future form.

As you can see, all these sentences are about somebody doing something, no mater their tense. With the passive voice, things get a bit mixed up, i.e. the direct object (in green) becomes the subject and the subject becomes the object:

An ice cream is being eaten by Dan. (wacky phrasing, I know)

A cake was baked by her for her friends.

These here are not perfect examples of passive voice. Actually, in a real GMAT question, you'd probably jump to "fix" them as soon as possible. We prefer the active voice over the passive voice in English (and in other languages too), since it's shorter and less convoluted. But there are instances when the phrase "demands" the passive voice (usually when the author of an action is unknown/unspecified).

Ann was raised by her grandmother because her mom, Marie Curie, was too busy.

He was killed in the car crash.

(for some reason, no examples using the Present and Future tenses pop into my head right now; probably cause I spent the night watching True Blood)

Now, I have this suspicion that all this nonsense I've been going on about is only tangentially related to your initial question, but since I wrote it down anyways, I'll just leave it there. In my experience, you'll see "BEING" in the passive voice in sentences such as:

Being born and raised in New Orleans, she was heartbroken when she heard about the tornado.

As you can see, the phrase "Being born and raised in New Orleans" is an attribute for "her". In this case, you really have verbs in the passive voice "being born" and "being raised". This might not be the case with other constructions involving "being":

Being a total jack at work won't help you make friends!

In this case, "being" is just the -ing form of the verb "to be".

I hope this makes sense to you.... Maybe I'll edit this after I get some sleep If there are things that seem stupid, please let me know.

Being born and raised in New Orleans, she was heartbroken when she heard about the tornado.

As you can see, the phrase "Being born and raised in New Orleans" is an attribute for "her". In this case, you really have verbs in the passive voice "being born" and "being raised". This might not be the case with other constructions involving "being":

I am posting a GMAT prep Question below. Please state, why is E correct and not the original sentence?

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.

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 several issues with the initial question:

1. Heavy commitment by an executive to a course of action - this section is convoluted by the phrase "by an executive". The normal phrasing would be "heavy commitment to a course of action", because "to a course of action" is a determinant to "commitment" and therefore should be as close to it as possible. They crammed "by an executive" in there because they had to mention the executive at some point. This is not the most favorable "point", so to speak.

2. makes it likely to miss... or misinterpret - ok, it is likely, but WHO will miss and misinterpret? With the original phrasing, you can't really tell. The other option tells you that the executive will! This is why the subject should go here.

gmat740 wrote:

Being born and raised in New Orleans, she was heartbroken when she heard about the tornado.

As you can see, the phrase "Being born and raised in New Orleans" is an attribute for "her". In this case, you really have verbs in the passive voice "being born" and "being raised". This might not be the case with other constructions involving "being":

I am posting a GMAT prep Question below. Please state, why is E correct and not the original sentence?

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.

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

IMO original is wrong because there are two "it"......

First it refers to "course of action"....

Second "it" logically refers to executive....but cannot refer to the same....because second has to refer to the same previous it.....

Thus original is wrong.....

As per what have I learnt from various posts at multiple threads....for being the best way is to test the sentence w/o being.....if it works then being is not required....else it is required.....e.g. similar to the one given in OG-10...
XYZ wrote two letters, being the only eyewitness account.....

here if we remove being, then also sentence makes sense....infact being is wrongly placed here....since it is "comma + ing" setup here (i.e. participle) and modifies the entire previous clause.

if you will see the GPrep question that you posted if you remove "being"...then sentence does not work....thus sentence may be correct....if there are no grammatical issues

Also just to add...IMO kicking out any option just because it is passive is not a correct thing to do in GMAT.....IMO this should be used as tie breaker....i.e. if nothing else worked....then look for passive way of elimination.....