A liar on lying

We are all a bunch of miserable liars. I watch people do it all day at work. "Did you do it?" "No I didn't do that." I know they did it and so do they and yet we have the charade. I come home and find one of my kids has transgressed one of my households social codes and I ask them "did you do it?" And the first answer, the natural one, is "no." Even my wife and I lie to each other on ocassion. Of course I, like everyone else, don't consider my lie a lie. I consider myself a person of integrity.
When I questioned my first suspect alone and was able to get multiple indicators of guilt but not a confession I asked for help. The investigator that helped me took a completely different approach. I had started out showing him the evidence that I had and the state statutes hoping to scare him into a confession. I went in, in essence, asking the suspect to drop his guard and be honest. My friend went in playing to the suspects presuppositions about himself, that he is a good guy, and his lies about the crime, that it was an accident and unintentional. The truth is that the crime was intentional. It bothered me that my friend was "lying" to the suspect in an effort to get him to drop his guard and confess. It worked in the end and he confessed, although only to his re-engineered version of the story. As a believer this was always a part of the job that mad me uncomfortable. Weren't believers supposed to be characterized by the truth? As I have continued to think about this method of questioning a suspect I have begun to understand it differently. Jesus himself said that we should be as gentle as doves but as shrewd as snakes. Is it reasonable to believe that I can lead a scoflaw into the truth with the bait of truth? He has no desire for it. He wants to hide the truth. The truth is embarrasing and incriminating. I think that is why Jesus handled the woman at the well like he did. He built rapport with her first. Showed her a desire for her welfare.
Any thoughts...