CRI is what's important with regard to colors and lighting. It's not a perfect rating system, and marketing departments do try to cheat as you'd expect, but it's the best thing you have to go by short of actually trying the lights out. A light source with a higher CRI emits a more complete spectrum of light and allows better color rendition. For a perfect CRI of 100, you do pretty much have to go with incandescent lights. Their CRI is 100 by definition. However, if you hate yellow light as much as I do then that isn't much of an option. Ain't no such thing as a 6500k incandescent light.
Fluorescent lighting phosphors have been improving and you can find lights with a CRI in the 90s now, which is very good. You can easily get them with a CRI below 60 if you aren't paying attention though, so it's important to check the specifications. The worst (and often the most common) fluorescent lights out there will actually have gaps in their emission spectrum where they emit no light of a given frequency at all. As IanB pointed out, those can drive even someone with normal vision crazy.
Checking the light source yourself with a color chart sounds like an excellent idea when it's that important. You end up collecting the same data that CRI testing was meant to collect, but you're doing it yourself with your own two eyes, and you're checking a much more complete spectrum than the handful of samples dictated by testing procedures.