Looks like the proper way to do it is described in the manual:
http://docs.python.org/dev/library/os.html#os.walk

for root, dirs, files in os.walk('python/Lib/email'):
    if 'CVS' in dirs:
        dirs.remove('CVS')  # don't visit CVS directories
    .....

I checked that it is covered by unit tests in /test_os.py so it is safe to use and bug can blo closed as invalid.