$ ipa help group-add
Purpose: Create a new group.
Usage: ipa [global-options] group-add GROUP-NAME [options]

should allow this:

ipa group-add docadmins

but it returns a usage error demanding a description. So, --desc is not really an option, is it? Hence,

Usage: ipa [global-options] group-add GROUP-NAME --desc=STR [options]

If you omit the description, the CLI doesn't prompt for it, it just returns an error. If you include it, it works fine.