WASX7016E: Exception received while reading file

I have never received this error before. Why am I getting this error and how can I fix it?

Symptoms

When you enable your profiling agent for the appsvr service, you receive the following error: WASX7016E: Exception received while reading file "$TOP/bin/websphere/modify_jvmargs.pyc"; exception information: sun.io.MalformedInputException

Resolving the problem

To resolve this issue, export LANG=C in the shell prompt, then run the pimprof.sh shell script.