What Your Office Says About You (Before You Ever Speak)

By Carl Stoddard, Doctors CFO

Bringing intention into a business doesn’t always start with strategy, systems, or numbers. Sometimes, it starts with something much simpler.

Years ago, while managing a team of about 15 people in Phoenix, one of my employees, Carol, said something that stuck with me. She told me my office was messy. Not in a rude way. Not critically. Just honestly. She said it didn’t match how professional I was—or how professional I should be—and that it felt beneath me. She wasn’t attacking my work. She was pointing out a disconnect between how I showed up as a leader and the environment I allowed around me. She was right.

That conversation changed a habit. Ever since then, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep my office clean. Not perfect—because real work is rarely perfect—but clean enough that it reflects competence, intention, and respect for the people who walk into it. And over time, I’ve realized why that matters so much. Recently, I walked into a potential client’s office. It was a medical practice. And it wasn’t clean. Not “busy-day cluttered.” Not “papers stacked on a desk.” It felt unsanitary. You could tell immediately. The thought that crossed my mind wasn’t logical or analytical. It was instinctive: If this is what the office looks like, how careful are they everywhere else?

That’s not a judgment people consciously plan to make. But they make it anyway. Instantly.

We don’t need perfection. But there is a line where things feel off, even if people can’t articulate why. When that line is crossed, trust quietly erodes.

I learned something similar much earlier in life. As a kid, I washed windows. To this day, I still notice them everywhere I go. I absolutely judge a business—at least a little—by whether their windows are clean. Do I clean mine every week? No. But when they get bad, I take care of it.

And if you’re running a restaurant, a medical office, or any business where trust, safety, and professionalism matter, your physical space sends a message long before your credentials do.

Clean doesn’t mean sterile. Organized doesn’t mean cold. Professional doesn’t mean perfect.

It means intentional.

Because cleanliness isn’t really about neatness. It’s about the signal you send. It’s about whether people feel confidence or hesitation the moment they walk in the door. Patients, employees, partners, and advisors are all reading that signal, whether you intend to send it or not. And once it’s sent, it’s hard to take back.

The takeaway is simple: your environment doesn’t have to be flawless. It just has to show care. When it does, it reinforces trust. When it doesn’t, it quietly undermines it. And that signal matters more than most people realize.