diff --git a/sdks/go/pkg/beam/core/runtime/harness/datamgr.go b/sdks/go/pkg/beam/core/runtime/harness/datamgr.go
index 0f2de99dd2adf..6385098d013ca 100644
--- a/sdks/go/pkg/beam/core/runtime/harness/datamgr.go
+++ b/sdks/go/pkg/beam/core/runtime/harness/datamgr.go
@@ -425,16 +425,20 @@ func (c *DataChannel) read(ctx context.Context) {
 					continue // we've already closed this cached reader, skip
 				}
 				r.PTransformDone()
-				if r.Closed() {
-					// Clean up local bookkeeping. We'll never see another message
-					// for it again. We have to be careful not to remove the real
-					// one, because readers may be initialized after we've seen
-					// the full stream.
-					delete(cache, id.instID)
-				}
 			}
 			seenLast = seenLast[:0] // reset for re-use
 			c.mu.Unlock()
+			// Scan through the cache and check for any closed readers, and evict them from the cache.
+			// Readers might be closed out of band from the data messages because we received all data
+			// for all transforms in an instruction before the instruction even begun. However, we can't
+			// know this until we received the Control instruction which knows how many transforms for which
+			// we need to receive data. So we check the cache directly every so often and evict closed
+			// readers. We will never recieve data for these instructions again.
+			for instID, r := range cache {
+				if r.Closed() {
+					delete(cache, instID)
+				}
+			}
 		}
 	}
 }