Yes its because the values aren't stored like you think they are. Mayas just doing you favor and using the units you THINK they are, same applies to time, its in seconds, minutes and so on (thus its base is different than ohers) but people think its in frames. But yes you can get rid of auto conversions. But yes also showing radians does omit the node as what you see is what you get!
However the snapback has nothing to do with the unit conversion node. Its something else altogether. So getting rid of the node does not solve your problem. because it has nothing to do with that node but rather how maya knows when to evaluate things.