Helpdesk Start & Due Dates

We're having a bit of a process issue and I'm looking for any suggestions people might have to minimize this issue.

Due to the nature of some of our engineering programs we've been forced to add some Subject Matter Experts in the general user population as workers in our Altiris Helpdesk Module. They're reporting to the Management within their departments that incidents are not meeting their start or due date requirements listed on the incident.

Over 99% of these are incidents that are not scheduled. So I've got a couple of things that quickly spring to mind. I'd appreciate any opinions on these or even alternate suggestions I'm missing at this time.

Option 1: Establish an SLA or other standard business date to extend it to a date in the future and implement an incident rule to set that information.

Option 2: Create a customization that would hide the Start and Due dates if the incident is "Not Scheduled". I'm not sure how to do this one, but it seems like the easier to manage option for us. Thoughts?