diff --git a/internal/cmd/root.go b/internal/cmd/root.go
index 9db949f..17765ca 100644
--- a/internal/cmd/root.go
+++ b/internal/cmd/root.go
@@ -99,6 +99,12 @@ func Execute() error {
 
 		// Enable Kubernetes specific entity detection implicitly
 		reportOptions.kubernetesEntityDetection = true
+
+		// Add implicit exclude for metadata.managedFields as this cannot
+		// be configured via a command-line flag using KUBECTL_EXTERNAL_DIFF
+		// due to an bug/feature in kubectl that ignore command-line flags
+		// in the diff environment variable with non alpha-numeric characters
+		reportOptions.excludeRegexps = append(reportOptions.excludeRegexps, "^/metadata/managedFields")
 	}
 
 	if err := rootCmd.Execute(); err != nil {