The workflow thing is why the usual advice with JIRA is to keep to Atlassian-supplied workflows instead of developing your own.

The custom workflows are often mandated by clueless managers, and often even if you have clueful JIRA admin they will silently try to fix manager's dumb idea instead of having the manager eat the turd sandwich.

Once, a coworker of mine decided that enough is enough, and decided to implement a workflow exactly as specified by management.

After week or two of totally lost productivity and reporting, system-supplied workflow was returned to and the manager never again tried to play with workflows.