I gave an example when discussing the use of active or passive sentence structures. As a remember, active sentences start with the subject as the doer of the verb. For example, I washed my car is an active sentence. The opposite type is when the object is used first. That type of sentence would be written: 'My car was washed by me.' It emphasizes what happened to the car rather than who washed it. A writer must choose to use active or passive depending on their required emphasis. An easy way of talking about this is to say we should 'put the important word at the beginning of the sentence.'I have a standard explanation of why using active is sometimes preferred in business writing. I talk about how I heard a tremendous crash when I was in the kitchen. I walked into the living room to find an enormous crack in my sliding balcony door. The story continues when I say I noticed two neighbour kids sheepishly standing in the yard. One had hit a line drive right into my window. He was around six or seven years old at the time. He could have tried to run away but didn't. Instead, he shyly looked at me and said, "Your window was broken." The point the students quickly understand is that some people use passive structures to avoid responsiblity for certain actions or decisions.
The problem with this story is that never really happened. I've repeated it so many times that it surely seems real to me though.