Hopefully, you succeeded when you tried this again.
I've done this quest as the first one for my Bard. I found that, as long as his buff meter was in the green, he succeeded at the tasks necessary for his quest. If he had too many negative buffs, then he failed.
However, I've found that if you are unsuccessful in a task then the little icon, telling you what the task is, doesn't go away. (This is from my own experience and from watching some 'Let's Play' videos on Youtube.) So, I wonder if your game was having a little blip, rather than it being 'operator error'?