Companies that use compensation consultants end up paying more to their CEOs, but a new Wharton study suggests that conflicts of interest between the consultant and the firm aren’t to blame.

Critics contend that compensation consultants have a financial interest in pushing for excessively high CEO packages because many of them profit from doing other work for the company. A recent Congressional committee report supported the idea that such conflicts drive up CEO pay. “There’s a feeling that executives are overpaid, and people want to get to the bottom of this issue,” says Wharton accounting professor Mary Ellen Carter , who coauthored this latest study with Brian Cadman, a visiting professor at Wharton and a professor of accounting information and management at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, and Stephen Hillegeist of INSEAD.

Their research, which included 880 large firms, found that while executives get paid more when compensation consultants are involved, the CEOs are still held to acceptable…