I have a script that grabs a few fields from a sales order and creates a pdf based on fields in the sales order, we have recently implemented a workflow that locks the sales order record after a certain state. when I run the script it now complains the record is locked, even though i'm not setting any values just trying to read them.. any ideas? or is there a user/role i can add to ignore the lock in the workflow?

Set the context of the Lock Record action to User Interface.