How to reference a locked field via a custom field

Hi

This is the background to my questions:

- There is a third party bundle installed on our Netsuite which is used for payroll processing

- The developer of the bundle has locked all the payroll related fields so that only the 'payroll admin' role is able to view and/or modify this

What I am trying to achieve:

1. There is a newly created Netsuite role ("Manager")in my organisation which requires view access to the employee 'annual salary' field which is a locked field from the third party bundle.

I have tried creating a workflow where a custom field ('annual salary v1') is updated using 'annual salary' (the locked field) as a source. However, when I try logging in as the 'manager' role to test this, the field doesn't populate and shows an error.