diff --git a/src/supplemental/tls/mbedtls/CMakeLists.txt b/src/supplemental/tls/mbedtls/CMakeLists.txt
index e3d767fcb..7e24e2992 100644
--- a/src/supplemental/tls/mbedtls/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/supplemental/tls/mbedtls/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -25,12 +25,12 @@ if (NNG_TLS_ENGINE STREQUAL "mbed")
     else()
         # We want to prefer config mode over our local find package.
         # mbedTLS v3 has a config file, which should work better than
-        # what we do here.  We do restore the setting though because
-        # user applications might not expect this.
-        if (NOT CMAKE_FIND_PACKAGE_PREFER_CONFIG)
+        # what we do here.  We only make this override locally, to
+        # avoid confounding any other package consumers, and we honor overrides.
+        if (NOT (DEFINED CMAKE_FIND_PACKAGE_PREFER_CONFIG))
             set(CMAKE_FIND_PACKAGE_PREFER_CONFIG TRUE)
             find_package(MbedTLS REQUIRED)
-            set(CMAKE_FIND_PACKAGE_PREFER_CONFIG FALSE)
+            unset(CMAKE_FIND_PACKAGE_PREFER_CONFIG)
         else()
             find_package(MbedTLS REQUIRED)
         endif()