It's a solution, but doesn't solve my problem that you have to 'know'
there's a problem that you need to do a Ctrl+F find. If the values
look normal, then a user won't 'know' they need to do the search. I'm
currently using the ISERROR function to pick out that formulas that do
break.

What I need is a way to incorporate the Ctrl+F method into a formula
that sits in the spreadsheet. Once it's generating a value, I can then
use the output to custom format or take some other action to alert the
user that there is an issue.
e.g. stick my magic formula in the last column of a row. get it to
look at all the cells in it's row for #REF! instances. If it finds one
it returns "problem" into the cell it's in. I can then custom format
the whole row to check if that cell contains "problem" and shade all
the cells red.....
eg. =IF((checkforbadrefs(A1:Z1)=TRUE),"problem","no bad refs found")