Spencer & Solomon, CPAs, Brought in an HR Consulting Firm

Spencer & Solomon, CPAs, brought in an HR consulting firm to evaluate the firm's performance management system. The firm has offices in six locations, and the manager of each location rates the office's staff members using a 5-point rating scale. After studying the appraisal results from the past three years, the consultants reported that they cannot make comparisons among the offices. What is the most likely problem?

A) The consultants aren't qualified to analyze this type of rating system.
B) One office has exceptional people, so contrast errors are occurring.
C) The managers let their opinions of one quality color their opinions of others.
D) The managers are making distributional errors, each using only part of the rating scale.
E) The managers tend to give higher ratings to people they consider similar to themselves.