>You're building lots of technical debt. It's going to end up costing your company lots of money down the road. Fix it now when it will cost less.
>
So, what is the properly written code for this method?

 internal Boolean ExecuteSqlCommand(SqlCommand sqlCommand, ref Int32 recordsAffected, ref String returnMessage, ref Int32 statusCode)
        {
            // Get the connection to the database
            sqlCommand.Connection = sqlConnection;

            // Execute the non-query...
            try
            {
                // SqlTransaction sqlTransaction = null;
                String command = sqlCommand.CommandText;

                //if (rollback)
                //{
                //    sqlTransaction = sqlCommand.Connection.BeginTransaction();
                //    sqlCommand.Transaction = sqlTransaction;
                //}

                if (rollback && CommandType.Text == sqlCommand.CommandType)
                    sqlCommand.CommandText = "BEGIN TRANSACTION UnitTest\r\n" + command + "\r\nROLLBACK TRANSACTION UnitTest";
                //TODO: Need to use ADO.NET transaction for stored procedures  
                Int32 rowsAffected = sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();

                // if (null != sqlTransaction)
                // {
                //     if (rollback)
                //         sqlTransaction.Rollback();
                //     sqlTransaction.Dispose();
                // }

                CheckUncommittedTransactions(sqlCommand);
                returnMessage = String.Format("{0} row(s) affected.", rowsAffected);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                statusCode = 400;
                returnMessage = ex.ToString();
                Logging.Log(returnMessage, 1);
                return false;
            }
            return true;
        }

We have several overloads for this method each dealing with different types of ExecuteCommand. Some also return formatted output directly, e.g.

 internal Boolean ExecuteSqlCommand(SqlCommand sqlCommand, ReturnType returnType, ref Int32 recordCount, ref String returnMessage, ref Int32 statusCode)
        {
            // For STR, XML, and XM2 return types
            // Execute the query and populate the formatted return string
            returnMessage = "";
            recordCount = 0;

            sqlCommand.Connection = sqlConnection;

            SqlDataReader sqlDataReader = null;
            try
            {
                // Execute the command
                sqlDataReader = sqlCommand.ExecuteReader();

                // Generate the return string (STR/XML/XM2), if applicable
                returnMessage = GetFormattedReturn(sqlDataReader, returnType, out recordCount);
                if (0 == recordCount && ReturnType.STR == returnType && String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(returnMessage))
                {
                    returnMessage = "DONE";
                    statusCode = 1;
                }

                // NN 02/05/2013 Added support for multiple result sets
                if (0 == recordCount && ReturnType.STR == returnType)
                {
                    // Do nothing
                }
                else
                {
                    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(returnMessage);

                    while (sqlDataReader.NextResult())
                    {
                        result.AppendFormat("\r\n{0}", GetFormattedReturn(sqlDataReader, returnType, out recordCount));
                    }
                    returnMessage = result.ToString();
                }

                // Check for uncommitted transactions and commit them, if necessary
                String command = sqlCommand.CommandText;
                CheckUncommittedTransactions(sqlCommand);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                returnMessage = ex.ToString();
                Logging.Log(returnMessage, 1);
                statusCode = 400;
                return false;
            }
            finally
            {
                if (null != sqlDataReader && !sqlDataReader.IsClosed)
                {
                    sqlDataReader.Close();
//                    sqlDataReader.Dispose();
                }
            }
            return true;
        }

Basically, the dll we're building is serving as a middle-tier for our main application written in C++ and it performs different database related activity. The C++ application sends invoke XML string and receives back XML (in few cases just string or specially formatted string).