Earlier this year, I argued that collaboration between doctors and industry can be valuable — but only when it’s done properly, and that patience for the current badly-designed version of this collaboration has run out on both sides. Several clinicians came back with a fair challenge: they agreed, but then asked: 'How do I tell the difference before I’ve given up a theater list to find out?'

It’s the practical question, and the right one to ask. Because you usually can tell. If you know how to read them, the signals are there in the invitation itself, before you commit a single hour of your time. What follows applies whether the invitation is to an advisory board, a steering committee, a paper, or a single call — the format changes, but what gives a company away doesn’t.

Here’s what makes this easy. A well-designed engagement and a hollow one don’t necessarily look different on the day; they look different in the asking. The company that knows what it wants from you can name the question it needs answered; the company that doesn’t simply cannot, because it doesn’t yet know itself what question it is asking.

So, three things to look for before you reply:

First: What are you being asked to change, not just attend? A serious engagement is there to get something the company genuinely needs — an idea tested, a question answered, input it doesn’t already have. Your contribution might actually change what they do. A hollow one exists simply to fill a room: the thinking is already done, and the meeting is there to decorate it with clinical faces. The tell for this is simple. Does the invitation say what they’re genuinely unsure about and what your input is actually for? If the purpose is vague or framed entirely around their product rather than around any genuine question, that vagueness is the product. A clear invitation lets you decide whether the task is worth your time. A vague one decides for you.

Second: Read what the invitation tells you against what it withholds. A clumsy invitation — no agenda, no clear objective, the dates before the purpose — isn’t just rude, it’s revealing. A company that asks for your diary before it explains the question has shown its hand: it wants your attendance, not your thinking. The serious ones work the other way round. They lead with the question, because the question is the point. You can read how seriously a company takes you based on the order in which it details the invite.

Third (and this is the one that matters most): Ask what will happen afterward. You can’t know in advance whether a company will follow up. But you can ask what they intend: what will they do with the information they are given? And will I hear what came of it? How a company answers — or the discomfort the question causes — tells you most of what you need to know. Ask, because so often the answer is nothing. You give up a day, you say something useful, and then silence — no feedback on what has changed, no decision you can point to, and not even a thank-you. An engagement that vanishes the moment it ends was never about your insight; it was about your attendance and your name on the list.

None of this requires confrontation, or assuming bad faith. Most companies that send poor invitations aren’t cynical; they’ve simply defaulted to process over design. Bad design has never cost them anything and so it persists. The compliance framework both sides experience as friction — the MedTech Europe Code’s insistence on a legitimate business need, a documented purpose, an evidenced output (1) — isn’t the obstacle. Read plainly, it asks for exactly what a good engagement already has: a real reason to meet, and something that comes out of that meeting. The rules aren’t the problem. The effort companies put into meeting them meaningfully, rather than minimally, is.

So the practical move isn’t to refuse industry, or to treat every invitation you get with suspicion. Neither side can afford that; the good collaborations are too valuable. It’s to recognize that the invitation is the first thing a company tells you about how it will treat you — and to read it before you answer.

The companies worth your time have already asked themselves the questions you’re putting to them, so asking them costs you nothing and clarifies the company's intent and legitimacy. And the companies that resent these questions were going to waste your time anyway.

The good ones won't mind you asking.