No class has any sort of character requirements. You can play a Paladin however you wish, as long as your alignment is Lawful Good. Same goes for Inquisitor or any other class.
EDIT: In addition to alignment, there are the codes of conduct for certain classes.
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It's fluff, or more accurately a generalization. The inquisitor class is good at trickery and guile, but individual inquisitors are not required to use either.
Barbarians are allowed to put ranks in Profession (Soldier) despite the fact that their description reads "they are not soldiers or professional warriors."
Slayers are not required to take combat maneuver feats, despite the fact that they "spend most of their time honing their weapon skills, studying the habits and anatomy of foes, and practicing combat maneuvers."
Gunslingers don't have to be bold, and rangers don't have to be patient, and bards don't have to be quick-witted, despite these adjectives being used in their class descriptions.
The code of conduct for inquisitors is as follows:
An inquisitor who slips into corruption or changes to a prohibited alignment loses all spells and the judgment ability. She cannot thereafter gain levels as an inquisitor until she atones (see the atonement spell description). An inquisitor who becomes an ex-inquisitor can, with the GM’s permission, take the heretic archetype, replacing her class abilities with the appropriate archetype abilities. If the character atones or joins a different faith, she loses her heretic abilities and regains her previous inquisitor class abilities.
Though an inquisitor has a wider range of allowable behavior than a paladin, an inquisitor isn't required to do anything that a paladin wouldn't do, and in fact slipping into corruption could easily involve falling as a paladin as well (since corruption is typically dishonourable).
Inquisitors typically have different roles and methods within a church than paladins do but they are not incompatible. In fact when combined you'd get the ideal law enforcement - someone with an incorruptible sense of justice, compassion for others' suffering, the ability to read people and recognize deceit, and the force of personality to encourage others to follow their example. (Of course, such a person would be rare - not least because this class combination is very MAD!)