For actively managed ETFs, it is "virtually impossible" to outperform a benchmark consistently over a long period of time, net of fees, said Filip Telibasa, owner of Benzina Wealth in Sarasota, Florida.

"Even if you look at prior performance, this is no indication that those returns will continue into the future," he said. "As a result, I prefer to use passive ETFs with clients. This is consistent with my belief in efficient markets. All information is publicly available and nobody can exclusively profit from it."

Telibasa said this trend toward lower-fee passive funds started with the advent of ETFs, where mutual funds with sales charges were used beforehand.

"From that time, there has been a huge focus on fees in the industry," he said. "Now, we are looking for expense ratios below one-tenth of a percent per year. I believe this trend will continue as fees impact net return. Said differently, the lower the fee, the higher the net return for the holder of the fund."

Telibasa said his firm does not look at performance and fees only when evaluating passive ETFs. Additionally, he said it is imperative to review the prospectus as well as the exposure and internal holdings of the fund in question to see if they match.

"For example, if the prospectus specifies a target of investing in small-cap U.S. stocks, we do not want to see any mid- or large-cap holdings," he said. "Sometimes, fund managers will do this to gain some extra alpha if the originally outlined asset class is underperforming in a given year. Zooming out, we want to be the ones to make that decision on the account level, not the managers on the fund level. This way, we have more control over the overall asset allocation and can tie it more closely to the client's goals."