Are "leads on" answers considered helpful?

Question

Related to the question: "Share monk AC bonus with animal companion mount? "

The user clearly describes the problem, and the qualities that are looked for in answers, namely something that requires less character investment than an example solution (sohei monk archetype).

One possible answer is ki mount ki power. However, this isn't a particularly good answer: while it technically fits the question, it is not helpful to the asker because the cost is higher than what was already mentioned in the question. In general, posting bad answers does not seem to be very helpful.

However, one quality of that answer is that it offers an alternative approach to the one who asked and a starting point to improve the answer. There might be a way to bypass the requirements for the ki power approach, even though the person posting the answer wasn't aware of it. This is what I would call a "leads on" answer (referring to the wording from this question), that is not useful but might lead to useful answers.

What would be the recommended approach in this situation? Should the alternative solution be posted as an answer, despite being considered a "bad answer"? Or should the answerer give up and not make the asker aware of the alternative solution because it might not be useful information at all?

Answer 1

I, for one, really hope you post an answer suggesting it—and references my other question you answered as ways in which ki mount might be more useful than sohei, despite requiring 6 levels rather than 4.

But to be clear, I would have been happy to see the answer even without including any means to avoid the 6 levels—because there always could be some way to accomplish it, and more ways of approaching my quandary are good. Without knowing some way of getting around the 6 levels I wouldn’t have accepted the answer, but I would upvote it.