The only one who really knows whether you're role-playing, or just rationalizing, is yourself. Personally, I'm not going to take a shortcut, because that would defeat the reason for why I'm playing the game in the first place. If other people at the table are secretly rationalizing their own actions, then I'll never know, so I try to not worry about it. I'm not going to second guess their motivations, for much the same reason that I'm not going to watch their dice.
But as far as 5E is concerned, meta-gaming is explicitly called out by the rules as being a bad thing, so I'm also not going to advocate for anyone following that path.