I often have several objects of the same kind either overlapping or touching in the editor, and in my current project I often need to arrange their Z order manually. If I have 4 objects of type A overlapping, right now I only see 4 A's in the Z order pane and I don't know which is which.
Simple solution, when the user selects and object in the editor, the object in the Z order pane gets highlighted, or gets bold font or something. Just as a clear indicator that "Oh, this is the object I'm interested in moving around, great, I'll just move it".
I get that selecting an object in the editor filters the Z objects pane, and it makes sense that this behavior would not happen both ways. Selecting an object in the Z pane should not change selections in the main editor.