As a web designer, IE is the bane of my existence. The reason things appear differently in IE is that the code that every other browsers read and render one way, IE chooses to ignore or render a completely different way. IE8 may ignore things that IE9 doesn't and vise versa. Often this means having an entire separate page of code solely dedicated to fixing known issues in IE and unique issues for the site.

I know that mk focuses on other issues around the site (one's that happen across the board) rather than attempting to solve IE issues.

You say it is out of your control, which I respect, but there are a number of other issues with IE that, if brought to the correct persons attention, may change the browser you're allowed to use. One is big scary security issues and zero day exploits that are found in pretty much every version of IE. Microsoft consistently patches these, but not after they have been discovered and exploited numerous times. The patches are obviously ineffective if you aren't consistently updating your IE. There are a number of scary articles if you google "ie zero day" that you can send over to management. That's how I got to use Chrome.