All the gauges on my instrument cluster are not working

It could be a ground but this is less likely than a cluster if all the gauges went out. The reason is if you look at the wiring diagrams you will see that all the sensor inputs are direct to the cluster so it is near impossible that all these failed. That means it is something they have in common. The only two things are the cluster and the ground as you mentioned. The way to test the ground is to just run a jumper directly to the negative battery terminal and then the ground terminal of the cluster. If everything comes back then that is your issue. If it does not then the cluster is the issue.

I understand that clusters are not known to fail but that doesn't mean that they don't.

Let me know if you have questions and we can go from there. Thanks

The process does not mention anything about this and the service information doesn't either. Clearly it would be nice if it stated they do not need to be programmed but if they did, it would tell you. Based on the wiring diagram and it having direct feeds from the sensors, it appears the cluster is just a display cluster which means you don't have to program it.