How to remove focus without setting focus to another control?

I like my UIs to be intuitive; each screen should naturally and unobtrusively guide the user on to the next step in the app. Barring that, I strive to make things as confusing and confounding as possible.

Just kidding :-)

I've got three TableRows, each containing a read-only and non-focusable EditText control and then a button to its right. Each button starts the same activity but with a different argument. The user makes a selection there and the sub-activity finishes, populating the appropriate EditText with the user's selection.

It's the classic cascading values mechanism; each selection narrows the available options for the next selection, etc. Thus I'm disabling both controls on each of the next rows until the EditText on the current row contains a value.

I need to do one of two things, in this order of preference:

1. When a button is clicked, immediately remove focus without setting focus to a different button
2. Set focus to the first button when the activity starts

The problem manifests after the sub-activity returns; the button that was clicked retains focus.

Re: #1 above - There doesn't appear to be a removeFocus() method, or something similar

Re: #2 above - I can use requestFocus() to set focus to the button on the next row, and that works after the sub-activity returns, but for some reason it doesn't work in the parent activity's onCreate().

I need UI consistency in either direction--either no buttons have focus after the sub-activity finishes or each button receives focus depending on its place in the logic flow, including the very first (and only) active button prior to any selection.