“The satisfaction of one answer merely leads to asking another question.” – Alberto Manguel
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Questions are more important than answers because questions seek to understand, to clarify and frame and evaluate. While answers, at their best, are temporary responses whose relative quality can decay over time, needing to be reformed and remade and reevaluated as things change.
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Of course, questions need to be updated too. And like ‘wrong’ answers, there can be bad questions.
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Questioning is the art of learning. Learning to ask important questions is the best evidence of understanding there is, far surpassing the temporary satisfaction of a correct ‘answer.’
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A question can be ‘bad’ for a number of reasons: it could be irrelevant to the situation, it could be based on a faulty premise, it could be loaded with cognitive biases, or other irrational patterns of thinking. It could also be too easy or too difficult.
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A question is a strategy for learning. A tool. You might think of a ‘bad question’ like a ‘bad tool’: it simply doesn’t do what it’s intended to do. In education, this usually means that it fails to facilitate learning in the short and long-term for the student.
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The right question, at the right time, can MAKE a learning experience.
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A good question, causes thinking, naturally produces more and better questions, and clarifies understanding. A bad question, stops thinking, leads to uncertainty, obscures understanding, and causes doubt.
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Two of the most common functions of a question are to assess knowledge or cause thinking.
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If a student doesn’t ask anything at all…. well, this could ‘reveal’ a lot of things. It could be a lack of background knowledge, or confidence, or engagement, or that there really is no room or need for them to ask…. or in the worst case, the instructor doesn’t permit questions (yes this happens)!
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Questions are important in any critical thinking dojo. The source, frequency, and quality of questions in the dojo, are among the best sources available to any teacher, of any grade or level, to discern whether the student understands what is being taught to them. 
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“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend 55 minutes to determine the proper question.” – Albert Einstein