Business communication textbooks have a tradition of instructing students in a formula for writing bad news messages to customers, job applicants, and other external recipients. The formula adopts an indirect approach: Open with a buffer or explanation of the situation, present the bad news, and affirm goodwill in the closing. However, the advice in textbooks tends to focus on routine or low-risk scenarios, like refusals or other responses to customer complaints. But what should business writers do when they must give bad news about high risk?
Most textbooks (e.g., Bovee and Thill, Locker, Ober) recognize approaches other than the indirect, "buffer" method, but they seem to focus on this when bad news is being conveyed to an external audience; however, textbooks seem to abandon this approach for internal communications (e.g., a bad news message from an employee to his/her superior). That is why I've offered the above modification.