A Contesting Skill Roll is where a Caster uses a Skill Tiers against an opposing Target's Skill Tiers.
For instance, trying to deceive a shopkeeper would cause a Contesting Skill Roll, the Player Character's Influence vs the Shopkeeper's Empathy.
By default, the Contesting Skill Roll Roll Result is hidden to prevent metagaming, and only visible to the Game Master. The difference is revealed to the GM determine the Difficulty Class and to account for the creature itself.
This can be also a fixed DC determined by the GM.