Why is that we know the exact price of a gallon of gas more than the exact amount that's withheld from our paycheck due to taxes? We have occasion to interact with both amounts on about the same schedule, and the amount that's withheld from our paychecks is significantly more. But we spend much more time looking at the price of gas, as we stand next to our cars, waiting for it to be pumped in.

When you publish salaries to show your culture of trust and transparency, you are also showing your culture of caring what salaries are. And your culture that it's important to know what other people are making. All of this serves to elevate the importance of salary across your organization (and potentially also trust and transparency).

If your goal for your organization is to have a culture that is that is not focused on salary, it's hard to defend the decision to publish everyone's salaries and make a big splash out in the world in your blog and in interviews about how your culture includes publishing salaries. Salaries, salaries, salaries. You'd be much better off segmenting salary conversations to a particular time (or times) of year, having those as individual conversations, and framing those conversations to your organizational culture--"we want to make sure you're being properly compensated... now let's get back to being great!"

There is a concept in social psychology called the "ironic effect"--essentially, if I tell you to stop thinking about pink elephants, you're going to think about pink elephants. The same problem applies here--if I publish everyone's salary to show how transparent the organization is, I'm also going to bring salary front and center to my organization and its culture.