Chrony stepping instead of slewing clock

I have a bunch of RHEL 6.8 - 7.4 Azure VMs for which the system clocks are out of sync (up to 300s slow). I'm installing Chrony on them but rather than slewing the clock to the correct time it is stepping it. I have commented out the makestep command in the config file but it still steps the clock. Note that this is upon staring Chrony for the first time, and without reboot. I have not observed the long term behaviour but, as far as I can see from the manual, Chrony should not step the clock even on first sync.

Any suggestions as to why this might be?

Solution 1:

If anyone is interested the cause of my problem was the initstepslew directive in chrony.conf. In the manual it states that this can be used to allow the clock to be stepped at boot time. However, it seems that it also allows chrony to step the clock the first time it is started.

The purpose of the initstepslew directive is to allow chronyd to make a rapid measurement of the system clock error at boot time, and to correct the system clock by stepping before normal operation begins. Since this would normally be performed only at an appropriate point in the system boot sequence, no other software should be adversely affected by the step.