Hotspots not allowing clicking on custom navigation buttons

I have several slide that ask the user to click on a specific area of the slide, with hotspots that trigger the "Correct" layer when they click the right spot, and the "Incorrect" layer when they click anywhere outside the hotspot.

I've also created custom Next, Prev, and Exit buttons, placing them on the active slide window & hiding the default Next/Prev & Volume buttons to maximize the slide widow space.

What's happening is if you try to click on any of the custom buttons such as Exit, it simply displays the "Incorrect" layer rather than activating the custom button, because it's considering that outside the hotspot area. The only thing that DOES work is it lets you click on the default grey Topbar area, so I CAN click on my "Menu" option to bring up the menu and switch slides that way.

Isn't there a way to make the hotspot trigger Show Layer Incorrect when the user clicks outside the hotspot, But still allow clicking on the custom navigation buttons I've made?

It won't let me place my custom buttons in the grey lower/upper default navigation areas (which I had wanted to hide to maximize space). I wouldn't mind user their default navigation areas if they only allowed you to customize those areas and customize their default navigation controls.

In the Trigger Wizard the Action is to Show Layer "Incorrect" When "User clicks outside" hotspot. Is there a way to define the "outside" area so that excludes my custom navigation buttons? It would be silly to have to draw two hotspots---one for the correct answer, one for the incorrect region. I suppose that would work, but it would mean a lot of extra work.

Any suggestions welcome...thanks!