I would say it's an attempt (however effective) at getting the player to describe what he or she wants to do, which is his or her role in the game.
I don't think anyone is asserting that the words must "line up exactly." But at a minimum, I need to hear a goal and an approach to properly adjudicate the result without making undue and possibly wrongful assumptions about what the character is actually doing and trying to accomplish.
I doubt anyone told you that you were a bad DM, even if they pointed out that you may sometimes be acting outside of the prescribed role of the DM. But in any case, "Is the door locked" is not describing what you want to do, which is the player's role in the game. "I check to see if the door is locked" is better, though it still lacks reasonable specificity as to how in my view. That might well matter if the door is trapped, for example. And to be clear, we're not talking about "using actions" here in any mechanical sense.
Yes, that does not seem advisable. I prefer to describe the environment and leave it to the player to describe how his or her character feels about it.
I didn't say you can't do that. I said I don't do it. It is out of bounds for our game. A player making an assumption, perhaps based on metagame thinking, is taking a risk by choice. That's on the player and not for the DM to correct in my view.
"How do you go about vlarging that desk, Jessy? How thorough is your vlarg? How much time to do you spend vlarging it? Wandering monsters want to know."