Discover limits of executives' pay (4)
I believe the answer is:
espy
'discover limits of executives' pay' is the definition.
'espy' can be an answer for 'discover' (thesaurus). I'm not sure about the 'limits of executives' pay' bit.
'discover limits of executives'' is the wordplay.
'discover' means to look at the middle letters (I've seen 'discovered' mean this).
'limits' becomes 'views' (view is a kind of limit).
'of executives'' becomes 'spy' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The middle letter of 'views' is 'e'.
'e'+'spy'='ESPY'
(Other definitions for espy that I've seen before include "Spot; observe" , "Observe (arch.)" , "Detect" , "Discern" , "Make out at a distance" .)