Hi Manuel,
I've experienced similar issues when my FOV has a globular cluster inside. Another solution is to exclude the conflicting areas from the focus routine, but it is not trivial because of meridian flips.
One concern about moving away from the target to focus is when you are close to the meridian, in this situation you might trigger a meridian flip when slewing to the focus target. One solution is to specify 2 focusing areas one east and one west to the target image.
Cheers,
Jose