In Lion you can customize which preference panels are shown in System Preferences.
Open System Preferences. Click and hold on the 'Show All' button and a list of preferences appears. At the bottom of the list, there is a 'Customize...' item that allows you to hide System Preferences using check boxes. This didn't exist in Snow Leopard.
[crarko adds: Yup, it's there. It's easy to turn visibility off and on, but curiously, it doesn't look like you need to authenticate to make those changes.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2011090413070793