A great deal has been said about “Q and A-ing” but few auditors know exactly what it is and all auditors have done it without exception up to now.

I have just completed some work that analyses this and some drills which educate an auditor out of it. With a better understanding of it, we can eradicate it. Q and A means asking a question about a pc’s answer.

A session in which the auditor Qs and As is a session full of ARC breaks.

A session without Q and A is a smooth session.

It is vital for all auditors to understand and use this material. The gain for the pc is reduced enormously by Q and A and clearing is not just stopped. It is prevented.

The term “Q and A” means that the exact answer to a question is the question, a factual principle. However, it came to mean that the auditor did what the pc did. An auditor who is “Q and A-ing” is giving session control over to the pc. The pc does something, so the auditor also does something in agreement with the pc. The auditor following only the pc’s lead is giving no auditing and the pc is left on “self audit”.

As nearly all auditors do this, no auditing is the rule of the day. Therefore I studied and observed and finally developed a precision analysis of it, for lack of which auditors, although they understood Q and A, nevertheless “Q’d and A’d”.

There are 3 Qs and As. They are:

1. Double questioning.

2. Changing because the pc changes.

3. Following the pc’s instructions.

This occurs on Rudiment Type questions and is wrong.

This is the chief auditor fault and must be cured.

The auditor asks a question. The pc answers. The auditor asks a question about the answer.

This is not just wrong. It is the primary source of ARC Breaks and out rudiments. It is quite a discovery to get this revealed so simply to an auditor as I know that if it is understood, auditors will do it right.

The commonest example occurs in social concourse. We ask Joe, “How are you?” Joe says, “I’ve been ill.” We say, “What with?” This may go in society but not in an auditing session. To follow this pattern is fatal and can wipe out all gains.

Here is a wrong example: Auditor: “How are you?” PC: “Awful.” Auditor: “What’s wrong?” In auditing you just must never, never, never do this. All auditors have been doing it. And it’s awful in its effect on the pc.

Here is a right example: Auditor: “How are you?” PC: “Awful.” Auditor: “Thank you.” Honest, as strange as this may seem and as much of a strain on your social machinery as you’ll find it, there is no other way to handle it.

And here is how the whole drill must go. Auditor: “Do you have a present time problem?” PC: “Yes” (or anything the pc says). Auditor: “Thank you, I will check that on the meter. (Looks at meter.) Do you have a present time problem? It’s clean.” or “……. It still reacts. Do you have a present time problem? That…… That.” PC: “I had a fight with my wife last night.” Auditor: “Thank you. I will check that on the meter. Do you have a present time problem? That’s clean.”

The way auditors have been handling this is this way, very wrong. Auditor: “Do you have a present time problem?” PC: “I had a fight with my wife last night.” Auditor: “What about?” Flunk! Flunk! Flunk!

The rule is never ask a question about an answer in cleaning any rudiment.

If the pc gives you an answer, acknowledge it and check it on the meter. Don’t ever ask a question about the answer the pc gave, no matter what the answer was.

Bluntly you cannot clean rudiments easily so long as you ask a question about a pc’s answer. You cannot expect the pc to feel acknowledged and therefore you invite ARC Breaks. Further, you slow a session down and can wipe out all gain. You can even make the pc worse.

If you want gains in a session never Q and A on rudiments type questions or Form type sec check questions.

Take what the pc said. Ack it. Check it on the meter. If clean, go on. If still reacting, ask another question of a rudiments type.

Apply this rule severely. Never deviate from it.

Many new TR drills are based on this. But you can do it now.

Handle all beginning, middle and end rudiments exactly in this way. You’ll be amazed how rapidly the pc gains if you do and how easily the rudiments go in and stay in.

In Prepchecking you can get deeper into a pc’s bank by using his answer to get him to amplify. But never while using a Rudiment or sec check type question.

This is a less common auditor fault but it exists even so.

Changing a process because the pc is changing is a breach of the Auditor’s Code. It is a flagrant Q and A.

Getting change on the pc often invites the auditor to change the process.

Some auditors change the process every time the pc changes.

This is very cruel. It leaves the pc hung in every process run.

It is the mark of the frantic, obsessive alter-is auditor. The auditor’s impatience is such that he or she cannot wait to flatten anything but must go on.

The rule of auditing by the tone arm was the method of preventing this.

So long as you have tone arm motion, continue the process.

Change the process only when you have run out all tone arm motion.

Rudiments repair processes are not processes in the full sense of the word. But even here the rule applies if to a limited extent. The rule applies this far: If a pc gets too much tone arm motion in the rudiments, and especially if he or she gets little tone arm motion in the session, you must run Prepchecking on the rudiments questions and do CCHs on the pc. Ordinarily, if you run a rudiments process in getting the rudiments in, you ignore the Tone Arm Motion. Otherwise you’ll never get to the body of the session and will have Q’d and A’d with the pc after all. For you will have let the pc “throw” the session by having out rudiments and will have let the pc avoid the body of the session. So, ignore TA action in handling rudiments unless you are Prepchecking, using each rudiment in turn in the body of the session. When a rudiment is used as a rudiment, ignore TA action. When a rudiment is used in the session body for Prepchecking, pay some attention to TA action to be sure something is happening.

Don’t hang a pc up in a thousand unflat processes. Flatten a process before you change.

There are “auditors” who look to the pc for all their directions on how to handle their cases.

As aberration is composited of unknowns this results in the pc’s case never being touched. If the pc only is saying what to do, then only the known areas of the pc’s case will get audited.

A pc can be asked for data on what’s been done by other auditors and for data in general on his reactions to processes. To this degree one uses the pc’s data when it is also checked on the meter and from other sources.

I myself have had it bad in this. Auditors have now and then demanded of me as a pc instructions and directions as to how to do certain steps in auditing.

Of course, snapping attention to the auditor is bad enough. But asking a pc what to do, or following the pc’s directions as to what to do is to discard in its entirety session control. And the pc will get worse in that session.

Don’t consider the pc a boob to be ignored, either. It’s the pc’s session. But be competent enough at your craft to know what to do. And don’t hate the pc so much that you take his or her directions as to what to do next. It’s fatal to any session.

“Q and A” is slanguage. But the whole of auditing results depends upon auditing right and not “Q and A-ing”.

Of all the data above only the first section contains a new discovery. It is an important discovery. The other two sections are old but must be discovered sooner or later by any auditor who wants results.

If you Q and A your pc will not achieve gains from auditing. If you really hate the pc, by all means Q and A, and get the full recoil of it.

A session without ARC Breaks is a marvellous thing to give and to receive. Today we don’t have to use ARC Break processes if we handle our rudiments well and never Q and A.