Why is this an issue?

While it is possible to access static members from a class instance, it’s bad form, and considered by most to be misleading because it implies to the readers of your code that there’s an instance of the member per class instance.

Noncompliant code example

public class A {
  public static int counter = 0;
}

public class B {
  private A first = new A();
  private A second = new A();

  public void runUpTheCount() {
    first.counter ++;  // Noncompliant
    second.counter ++;  // Noncompliant. A.counter is now 2, which is perhaps contrary to expectations
  }
}

Compliant solution

public class A {
  public static int counter = 0;
}

public class B {
  private A first = new A();
  private A second = new A();

  public void runUpTheCount() {
    A.counter ++;  // Compliant
    A.counter ++;  // Compliant
  }
}