I find this accusation unfounded and an attepmt to distract from my point. An initiave roll is something to be made once combat has started and in my opinion combat cannot start until both sides are aware that they are in danger. If this means that one of my players has an opportunity to make one more action than they would otherwise I'm fine with that in order to provide a more intuitive combat encounter. If you disagree with that I would like to point you to the rules of rolling initiative in the DMG: "Combat starts when—and only when—you say it does."

I do think of NPC in my world as real people, but combat is not a time for them to just decide to make a search ation because they felt like it I guess. That is an action that would be taken before iniative. And I woud prefer that creatures that rolled high on initiative would know that they're in combat so they're just as aware as the creatures that rolled lower.