That's what sidestepping means, no?

That the answer doesn't matter, and capabilities and behaviour are there either way.

That wasn't my reading of the comment, but I guess it's possible that that is what was intended.

To my mind, "sidestepping the question of consciousness" and "sidestepping any notion of consciousness" mean very different things.

From context it doesn't look like this was the interpretation of "sidestepping" OP was using.