Our SOP was to fly the needles to minima and only then look up, every flight.
As you were flying multi crew jets (HS125) your co-pilot would have been looking out the whole time, which makes this rather different to doing it single-pilot.
In SP solo IFR one flies the IAP (
if one is flying the IAP) but one looks out periodically after the point where one becomes visual with the runway.
Flying into street lights etc is the kind of thing which happens at night, and then flying the IAP more or less all the way down makes sense.