In what ways, if at all, does transparency influence how politicians cooperate with interest organizations? While there are convincing normative arguments stressing the importance of transparency in politics, empirical evidence for how transparency in practice affects how politicians cooperate with interest organizations is scarce. In this article, I address this gap by conducting a mixed-method survey experiment with 1659 Swedish politicians. Although the findings reveal that a lack of transparency reduces some politicians’ willingness to cooperate closely with interest organizations, it is in general not their primary concern. Instead, the primary concern for most politicians in this study is whether they have to accept interest organizations' suggestions without comprehensively exercising their political judgment. These results contribute to the literature by shedding light on how politicians themselves see the role of transparency as a mechanism for democratic accountability and by theoretically develop the key role of political judgment. Future studies can explore how political judgment functions as a substitute for other principles in politics and normatively evaluate to what extent, if at all, it should.