Like many federal agencies contemplating reform these days, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is hearing a lot from the industry it regulates.

But executives and lobbyists don’t always have to knock on the commission’s door. Some are already inside.

They belong to the Global Markets Advisory Committee, which was set up by the CFTC to provide it with private-sector expertise. All of the committee’s 19 members are representatives of financial exchanges, investment banks or other industry groups — an imbalance that is coming under fire from a key senator, farm and consumer organizations, and businesses such as airlines that are sensitive to commodity prices.

The committee, which operates below the general public’s radar, is one of hundreds of similar advisory panels throughout government. It is emblematic of the way industry players or technical experts with a vested interest in agency decisions can gain unfettered access to regulators and a platform to advance arguments in Congress.

A 1972 federal law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, requires advisory committees to be “fairly balanced.”

The global markets committee has the ear of decision-makers at the CFTC, a government agency long viewed as permissive and now at the crux of a crackdown on the obscure world of privately traded derivatives. Those often-speculative insurance contracts wreaked havoc on the ailing financial system.

When the advising group gathers in December it will focus on derivatives reform. The meeting comes as CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler tries to impose oversight on trillions of dollars in bets on future prices of commodities such as oil and wheat, as well as more exotic mortgage debts. Advancing bills in Congress would impose more capital requirements on derivative dealers and move some trades onto open exchanges.

Such efforts don’t appear to mesh with one of the advisory committee’s formal purposes, described in its 2009 annual report, as “avoiding unnecessary regulatory and operational impediments to conducting global business.”

Jill E. Sommers, one of the CFTC’s five commissioners, chairs the advisory committee and chooses its members. A former industry lobbyist herself, Sommers is a Republican recently reappointed by President Obama.

Big banks and investment houses are using the committee “to protect their profits and their dark market activity. They want to have carte blanche — and they look at Jill Sommers as an ally,” said Jim Collura, a lobbyist for the New England Fuel Institute, one of the groups that has complained to Sommers about being excluded from the process.

Sommers did not reply to requests for comment.