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.…