It seems unloading the chunk is enough, plus it only affects newly placed stairs. I was working on extending a staircase I had built previously and then went away for a bit. When I came back all the new steps had disappeared but the old ones were still there. Lighting isn't updated so one can still tell where the stairs were placed.
Happens to me too.
OS: Mac OS X (ver 10.11.6, arch x86_64)
Java: 1.8.0_60 (by Oracle Corporation)
Launcher: Minecraft Launcher 1.6.61 (bootstrap 5)
Minecraft: 16w39a (updated Wed Sep 28 15:33:50 CEST 2016)