The flowers of Cephalanthera austiniae are totally white, with a small spot of yellow on the tips of the flowers. This yellow coloration is one good indicator that this orchid is pollinated by insects, providing a guide for them to land. It has fairly large flowers for an orchid (about 3 cm long) and produces over twenty-five of them. The flowers are subsessile with three lobes, and have a cupped appearance, as the flower never opens fully. 

The flower is said to smell faintly of vanilla, and has a sticky stigma. This stickiness acts as a kind of glue, so that when insects enter the flower to collect nectar, the pollen becomes stuck to them. The insects it attracts are typically small flies, though it doesn't seem terribly picky about who pollinates it, as its mechanism for pollination is a fairly simple one.