My understanding (and I don't have a copy of the "Continuum' version of the rules, so am working from what I remember of an earlier play test version, so no guarantees that this was ever right, let alone right now...) is that the pass/fail cycle is for use in setting the base resistance between contests rather than within contests.
The theory it "doesn't matter" if the PC's fail every (or nearly every) round in a HQ2.0 - They will lose the contest, which might make things more difficult for them, but their failure (should) just open new options to progress the scenario. The suggestion would be that if you can't think of an interesting consequence for the failure you shouldn't be rolling a contest for it (It effectively becomes a "no self respecting hero would fail to..." moment)
You can, of course choose to roll and "fudge" the results to hide this from the players (but if you are rolling in the open, beware of rolling an 01 when the players roll a 20 and don't have any masteries to bump the fumble...) but if you are "faking" extended contests like this then you might want to rethink either why you don't want a "real" contest or why you want it to appear to be an extended contest (or both...)
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