How disgusting is this reference ?

there should be some common object you can get this information from, say for instance in your case if your inventory is a widget save a referance to it in the hud and then anything can access it by GetHUD->GetMyInventory

or if the inventory is one an Actor find a way to get that Actor and get its inventory component.
If its single player you could basically store references anywhere, GameMode, GameInstance etc for easy access