I've been in some form of adult technical/nuclear education most of my life. In my experience test questions come from objectives that come from job/task analysis - "what does the individual have to know to do the job?"
In the 100 years that aviation has been in existance, nobody has ever conducted such an analysis; it might have solved many issues if they had!
The JAA produced a central question bank for commercial exams and then from the questions, someone else formulated objectives! All backwards of course.