It might be a regional setting, but I have never seen an MFA cluster that didn't do this.
The MFA cluster I retrofitted to my A4 Jetta did this, my A5 Jetta did this, and now the Passat does it.
Something tells me it's a safety feature and there's no programming it out. If you were enterprising enough and had an A4 car (or possibly early A5) you might be able to reprogram the EEPROM with some of the tools that are out there, but later clusters entail the use some pretty tough encryption that isn't readily broken.