In an encouraging performance two weeks out from the Paris Olympics, Kerr was the only athlete to clear 2.33m, achieving the height on his third attempt.
Kerr was three centimetres short of his national record - set four months ago when he won gold at the world indoor championships in Glasgow.
That 2.36m height remains the second-highest clearance of any athlete this year behind the 2.37m achieved by Italian Gianmarco Tamberi.
Kerr, 27, started his sequence smartly, clearing 2.16m, 2.21m and 2.25m all on the first attempt.
He failed twice at 2.28m but was successful on his third before a clean first-up attempt at 2.31m.
In the final act of the evening, Kerr had one attempt at a world-leading height of 2.38m but fell short.
Earlier, Zoe Hobbs was sixth in the women's 100 metres, with her time of 11.15 seconds just 0.02s outside her season's best.
Running in lane one, Hobbs started well and finished 0.3s behind comfortable winner Julien Alfred of St Lucia.
A third Paris-bound New Zealand athlete, Tori Peeters, was sixth out of seven women in the javelin field but well below her best.
Peeters threw the same 55.80m distance in her first and fourth throws but fouled in her other three, going nowhere near her season-best 61.26m.
Japan's Haruka Kitaguchi won with a best throw of 65.21m.
