Hi. I just stumbled upon this thread, since I’m trying to wrap my head all around the subject of IK and one uses it, so.
First thing I do understand the feelings BlackFangTech have, such things could give more confusion and bad practice and all that stuff 
Second thing, there are Virtual Bones feature implemented in 4.17 I think, which pretty much eliminates the need to animate IK bones during the animation creation process.
Please take a look at Virtual Bones documentation, in short: you can create your “IK bones” at the Skeleton Editor it would take few clicks and you are good to go.