Situational awareness is the key, and that usually comes with experience (as well as planning/briefing). I had a great example last week - I selected the AHRS to "DG" instead of "Mag" before startup to see how long it would take the student to see that something was not quite right.
45 mins later....(and with a big yellow HDG box on the PFD all this time), we were going for a hover OGE 1000' AGL as previously briefed. The wind indication on the PFD was now well and truly corrupted, showing about 180 deg out. But any check of groundspeed versus airspeed would show that we were 10-12 kts downwind (as per the weather forecast discussed at the brief).
Of course I could see all this unfolding, and I was ready to shove the nose forward (sorry M.Vuichard!) as soon as the vertical speed started to get out of the comfort zone. But, you would expect any competent and aware pilot to have noticed one of the many clues that were there all along, and we would never have got into the situation.