Doctoral supervision is a subtle but complex form of teaching in higher education, where supervisor-to-candidate expectations including support around the literature are important, but supervisory practices and candidate starting points can be disparate and expectations are not always discussed. This paper uses autoethnographic reflections and a practitioner inquiry to explore: How involved should supervisors be in the literature search and literature review writing? This issue arose following the transition from a postgraduate candidate to an academic involved in supervising and teaching postgraduate candidates, co-facilitating supervisor development programmes and researching doctoral supervision. This paper proposes that the involvement of supervisors in the literature search or review could be classed as operating on a conceptual model: the 'sliding scale'. Readers are asked to consider the different tensions in this practice and invited to address them using the 'sliding scale' to encourage conversations with candidates in higher education supervision or teaching.