diff --git a/lib/ansible/module_utils/aireos.py b/lib/ansible/module_utils/aireos.py
index 7395456c6a5..9529e258df7 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/module_utils/aireos.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/module_utils/aireos.py
@@ -47,8 +47,9 @@ ARGS_DEFAULT_VALUE = {}
 
 
 def sanitize(resp):
-    # Takes config from device and strips whitespace from all lines
+    # Takes response from device and strips whitespace from all lines
     # Aireos adds in extra preceding whitespace which netcfg parses as children/parents, which Aireos does not do
+    # Aireos also adds in trailing whitespace that is unused
     cleaned = []
     for line in resp.splitlines():
         cleaned.append(line.strip())
@@ -112,7 +113,7 @@ def run_commands(module, commands, check_rc=True):
         rc, out, err = exec_command(module, cmd)
         if check_rc and rc != 0:
             module.fail_json(msg=to_text(err, errors='surrogate_then_replace'), rc=rc)
-        responses.append(to_text(out, errors='surrogate_then_replace'))
+        responses.append(sanitize(to_text(out, errors='surrogate_then_replace')))
     return responses
 
 
diff --git a/lib/ansible/modules/network/aireos/aireos_config.py b/lib/ansible/modules/network/aireos/aireos_config.py
index f57ed4c5118..54a02e842bb 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/modules/network/aireos/aireos_config.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/modules/network/aireos/aireos_config.py
@@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ backup_path:
   type: string
   sample: /playbooks/ansible/backup/aireos_config.2016-07-16@22:28:34
 """
-from ansible.module_utils.aireos import run_commands, get_config, load_config, sanitize
+from ansible.module_utils.aireos import run_commands, get_config, load_config
 from ansible.module_utils.aireos import aireos_argument_spec
 from ansible.module_utils.aireos import check_args as aireos_check_args
 from ansible.module_utils.basic import AnsibleModule
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@ def main():
 
     if module._diff:
         output = run_commands(module, 'show run-config commands')
-        contents = sanitize(output[0])
+        contents = output[0]
 
         # recreate the object in order to process diff_ignore_lines
         running_config = NetworkConfig(indent=1, contents=contents, ignore_lines=diff_ignore_lines)