There are many questions Alison Green is asked as a columnist who writes about workplace issues. There was the woman who wanted to know if she should attend couple’s therapy with her boss and the boss’s boyfriend. (The boyfriend happened to be her father.) Another time she heard complaints about a janitor who cast a hex on her colleagues.

But Ms. Green was taken aback recently when asked about her salary, a topic so fraught even she couldn’t come up with a good answer. “No one has ever asked me that,” she said. “I don’t want to say.”

Many employees are loath to discuss their salaries, she said, worried it would cause resentment, or worse, among peers. “We are all so weird about telling people how much money we make, even me.”

Perhaps it is why, too, Ms. Green recently asked readers of her “Ask A Manager” website to share their job title, where they live and how much they make each year. Answers were anonymous; the data was compiled in a spreadsheet on Ms. Green’s website so people could sort through the data.